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MACMILLAN'S   STANDARD    LIBRARY 


A    PRINCE    OF    EUROPE 

CHELIANTHUS) 


A  PRINCE  OF  EUROPE 

(HELIANTHUS) 


BY 
OUIDA 

AUTHOR    OF    "  UNDER    TWO    FLAGS,"    "  MOTHS," 
ETC.,    ETC. 


COPYRIGHT,  1908, 
BY  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.    Published  October,  1908.    Reprinted 
October,  1908  ;  May,  1911. 


WcrfanoU  IfrtBB 

J.  8.  Gushing  Co.  —  Berwick  A  Smith  Co. 
Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


PUBLISHERS'    NOTE 

THIS  novel  is  the  last  work  of  the  gifted  writer  who 
was  so  widely  known  during  her  lifetime  under  the 
nom  de  plume  of  "  Ouida."  Illness  and  other  causes 
retarded  her  in  writing  the  story,  which,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  was  planned  and  outlined  some  years  ago. 
Fortunately,  however,  the  chapters  had  been  set  up 
in  type  as  they  were  written ;  and  as  it  was  obvious 
that  the  story  had  nearly  reached  its  end,  it  has  been 
judged  best  to  publish  it,  without  alteration  or  addi- 
tion, exactly  in  the  form  in  which  it  was  left  by  its 
author  after  having  been  revised  by  her  in  proof. 


2229Q41 


CHAPTER   I 

THE  sun  was  setting  over  the  sea  of  the  west,  and 
its  glow  shone  on  the  beautiful  and  classic  city  of 
Helios,  the  capital  of  the  ancient  land  of  Helianthus. 
In  the  long  and  stately  streets,  clouds  of  dust  were 
golden  with  the  sad  reflection  of  an  unseen  glory 
which  is,  at  such  an  hour,  all  that  many  thousands  of 
the  dwellers  in  cities  enjoy  of  the  beauty  of  evening. 
The  thoroughfares  of  the  capital  were  full  of  people, 
and  down  the  central  street  of  all,  so  famous  in 
history,  a  cavalcade  was  passing,  a  military  feast  for 
the  eyes  of  a  population  which  was  not  allowed  many 
other  pleasures.  On  either  side  of  the  street,  which 
had  been  in  great  part  widened,  altered,  modernised, 
made  monotonous  and  correct,  white  marble  was  the 
chief  architectural  feature,  and  great  white  palaces 
towered  towards  the  clear  sky,  which  was  blue,  deeply 
blue,  like  the  bells  of  the  wild  hyacinth.  Striped 
awnings,  scarlet  and  white,  the  national  colours, 
stretched  over  the  balconies ;  there  were  flags 
drooping  from  gilded  flagstaffs  in  most  of  the 
windows,  from  most  of  the  doorways ;  the  flowers 
which  had  been  cast  down  from  above  on  to  the  pave- 
ment were  already  trodden  into  the  dust,  and  there  was 


2  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

a  curious  odour  of  natural  and  artificial  perfumes,  of 
burnt  powder,  of  trampled  roses,  of  hot  flesh,  equine 
and  human,  steaming  from  the  heat  of  the  past  day. 
Porphyry  pillars,  galleries  of  gilded  metal,  of  pierced 
woodwork,  or  of  bronze  arabesques,  sculptured 
porticoes,  painted  shrines,  plate-glass  shop-fronts, 
hanging  tapestries,  frescoed  frontages,  shone  in  the 
amber  luminance  of  the  early  evening.  The  dull- 
coloured  clothing  of  a  metropolitan  crowd  was  largely 
broken  up  by  the  deep  yellows,  the  red  purples,  the 
light  blues,  the  dark  crimsons,  of  the  costumes  of  the 
country,  and  of  the  seafaring  peoples,  and  by  the 
uniforms  of  the  soldiery  lining  the  edges  of  the 
pavements  ;  great  bursts  of  martial  music  enlivened 
the  air ;  the  brilliancy  of  sunset  lent  to  the  scene  a 
gaiety  not  its  own. 

Despite  the  passing  of  two  thousand  years  the 
capital  of  Helianthus  was  still  a  beautiful  and 
classic  city,  throned  on  its  eternal  hills,  with  the 
semicircle  of  its  shore  washed  by  the  Mare  Magnum, 
and  the  mountains  on  the  opposite  side  of  the 
bay  soaring  to  the  clouds,  and  often  capped  by 
snow  until  the  month  of  May.  Modernity,  the 
brutal  and  blundering  Cyclops  who  misconceives 
himself  to  be  a  fruitful  and  beneficent  deity,  had 
struck  his  stupid  blows  at  its  temples,  its  domes, 
its  towers,  its  palaces,  had  strewn  its  soil  with 
shattered  marbles,  had  felled  its  sacred  laurel 
groves,  had  sullied  or  silenced  its  falling  or  rushing 
waters,  had  befouled  with  smoke  its  white  marble 
colonnades,  its  towering  palm  plumes,  its  odorous 
gardens.  Modernity  had  driven  his  steam-roller 
over  the  narcissus,  the  hyacinth,  the  cheiranthus ; 
and  steam  pistons  throbbed  where  the  doves  of 


i  HELIANTHUS  3 

Aphrodite  had  nested.  But  the  city  was  still  noble 
through  the  past,  and  unspeakably  fair  through  those 
portions  of  unviolated  heritage  which  it  retained ; 
and  its  domes  and  minarets  and  bell-towers  still 
shone  in  the  light  of  the  sun  or  the  moon  against 
the  deep  green  of  its  cypress  and  cedar  groves. 

Many  of  its  streets  were  still  untouched ;  its 
women  still  carried  their  bronze  jars  to  its  fountains; 
its  avenues  of  planes,  and  tulip-trees,  and  magnolias, 
were  not  all  destroyed,  though  defiled  by  the  shriek- 
ing tramway  engines,  the  stinking  automobiles,  and 
though  their  boughs  were  often  cruelly  hacked  and 
cut  away  to  leave  free  passage  for  these  modern  gods, 
the  electric  wire  and  the  petrol  car.  Ever  and 
again,  some  porphyry  basin  whose  waters  gleamed 
beneath  the  great  green  leafage  of  sycamores  ;  some 
colossal  figure  of  hero  or  of  deity  ;  some  silent  stately 
arcade,  with  the  sea  glistening  beyond  its  arches ; 
some  sun-browned,  mighty,  crenellated  wall ;  some 
vast  palace  with  ogive  windows,  and  gratings  elabo- 
rately wrought,  and  bronze  doors  in  basso-relievo, 
and  deep  overhanging  roofs,  and  machicolated 
towers, —  these  would  recall  all  that  Helios  had  been 
in  ages  when  its  white  oxen  were  sacrificed  to  gods 
who  are  now  remembered  only  in  the  nomenclature 
of  the  constellations  of  the  sky,  and  its  poets,  who 
are  still  quoted  by  mankind,  were  crowned  with  the 
wild  olive  and  the  laurel  in  its  holy  places.  With 
furious  haste  whole  quarters  had  been  torn  down 
and  swept  aside  and  replaced  by  the  mindless,  ignoble, 
and  monotonous  constructions  of  the  present  time; 
but  other  quarters  still  remained  where  the  native 
population  thronged  together,  gay  in  their  poverty 
and  mirthful  in  their  rags,  although  hunger  lay 


4  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

down  with  them  at  night  and  arose  with  them  in  the 
morning,  continual  companion  of  their  working 
hours.  For  a  brief  space  on  this  festal  day  they 
ceased  from  labour,  and  tried  to  forget  their  starva- 
tion in  the  sight  of  their  rulers  and  the  soldiery  of 
this  imperial  and  military  spectacle. 

The  King  had  already  passed,  with  his  beloved 
friend  and  nephew,  one  of  those  friends  to  be  kissed 
on  both  cheeks  and  watched  with  hand  on  hilt.  It 
was  for  the  Emperor  Julius  that  the  military  display 
on  the  Field  of  Ares  had  been  made  that  day,  and 
the  Emperor  Julius  had  said  many  sweet  and  gracious 
things  about  it :  what  he  had  thought  was  another 
matter,  which  concerned  no  one. 

After  the  King,  there  had  passed  the  Crown 
Prince,  with  his  cousin,  the  young  son  of  the  great 
Julius,  receiving  the  conventional  cheers  which  are 
given  to  those  who  are  powerful  but  not  beloved. 
Then  had  followed  a  squadron  of  White  Cuirassiers, 
a  dazzling  regiment ;  some  companies  of  the  Rhsetian 
Mountaineers,  a  popular  corps,  with  the  feathers  of 
the  wild  turkey  in  their  hats ;  some  squadrons  of 
light  cavalry  on  weedy  and  weary  horses,  not  well- 
groomed,  and  still  less  well-fed,  the  small  and 
slender  horses  of  the  treeless  plains  of  the  south- 
east ;  and  some  field-batteries  not  exceedingly  smart 
in  appearance  nor  exact  in  movement,  of  which 
the  gun-carriages  lumbered  along,  too  heavy  for 
their  weakly  teams,  whilst  the  metal  of  cannon  and 
of  caisson  was  dusty  and  dull.  After  these  tramped 
some  companies  of  infantry,  very  young  soldiers, 
thin,  and  small  of  stature,  who  wore  ill-fitting  uni- 
forms and  were  footsore  and  fatigued.  No  one 
cheered  these. 


i  HELIANTHUS  5 

Suddenly  there  was  a  movement  of  reviving 
interest ;  the  ladies  who  had  risen  to  leave  the 
balconies  returned,  and  reseated  themselves ;  the 
people  pushed  each  other  forward,  and  scrambled 
to  get  out  of  the  centre  of  the  roadway,  the  guards 
thrusting  back  some  scores  roughly  and  needlessly. 
A  half-squadron  of  Hussars  came  in  sight,  trotting 
briskly  with  drawn  swords;  behind  them  was  an 
open  carriage  with  four  horses  and  postillions  in  the 
royal  liveries,  azure  and  silver.  In  the  carriage  was 
a  young  man  in  uniform,  who  carried  his  hussar's 
shako  on  his  knee,  and  nodded  familiarly  with  a 
tired  smile  to  the  multitudes  who  cheered  him.  He 
did  not  look  up  to  the  balconies  and  windows  of  the 
palaces,  although  their  occupants  cast  roses  and  lilies 
down  as  he  passed ;  he  looked  at  the  populace  crowd- 
ing the  roadway. 

He  came  and  went  in  a  cloud  of  sun-gilt  dust,  a 
vehement  and  ardent  roar  of  voices  greeting  him  on 
his  way  ;  ladies  above  waved  their  handkerchiefs  and 
kissed  the  flowers  they  threw ;  the  people  below 
pushed  and  hurt  each  other  in  their  efforts  to  get 
nearer  to  him ;  his  carriage  swept  by  in  a  storm  of 
applause  and  loud  cries  of  c  Elim !  Elim !  Elim ! 
Long  live  Prince  Elim  ! ' 

'  There  goes  one  who  is  at  heart  with  us,'  said  a 
journalist  of  the  city  to  a  friend  as  they  stood  to- 
gether in  the  crowd. 

c  No,'  said  the  friend,  who  was  wiser.  {  He  is 
with  no  one.  He  sees  too  clearly  to  find  satisfaction 
in  modern  politics.  We  cannot  content  him  any 
more  than  his  own  people  do.' 

The  young  prince  passing  at  that  moment  recog- 
nised the  two  speakers  as  writers  on  the  Republican 


6  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

Press  of  Helios,  and  made  them  a  friendly  gesture 
of  his  hand. 

His  father's  police-spies,  mingling  with  the  throng 
as  mere  citizens  or  operatives,  saw  the  gesture  and 
noted  it. 

His  carriage  passed  on,  the  horses  fretting  and 
fuming  at  the  pressure  of  the  populace  against  their 
flanks. 

The  people  cried  again  :  c  Elim  !  Elim  !  Elim  ! 
Long  life  to  Elim  ! ' 

He  bowed  to  the  crowds  with  a  smile  which  was 
neither  glad  nor  gay.  He  was  thinking  :  *  They 
would  come  out  in  the  same  numbers  to  see  the  pro- 
cession of  a  travelling  menagerie  ;  and  if  there  were 
a  blue  lion  or  a  green  tiger  to  be  seen  they  would 
cheer  as  warmly.' 

He  regretted  that  the  crowds  did  come  out,  did 
cheer.  It  dwarfed  human  nature  in  his  eyes ;  it 
made  him  ashamed  of  his  own  countrymen.  So,  if 
the  statue  of  a  god  could  think,  would  it  feel  towards 
its  worshippers,  whether  it  were  named  £eus,  Buddha, 
Christ,  or  Jehovah. 

To  the  mind  of  a  thinker  there  is  no  spectacle 
more  painful,  more  provocative  of  wonder  and  of 
sadness,  than  the  sight  of  the  multitudes  of  a  capital 
city  standing  for  hours  in  sun,  or  rain,  or  snow, 
elbowing  each  other  for  a  foremost  place,  breaking 
down  tree-tops,  stone  copings,  marble  pedestals, 
bruising  the  bosoms  of  women  and  crushing  the  limbs 
of  children,  in  order  to  see  a  royal  procession  pass  by 
along  familiar  roadways.  And  this  young  prince  was 
a  thinker,  a  philosophic  thinker,  although  having 
been  born  in  the  purple  he  had  no  right  to  be  so. 
For  the  first  duty  of  a  prince  is  never  to  allow  his 


mind  to  stray  outside  the  ring-fence  of  received  and 
conventional  opinion  ;  he  must  never  question  the 
superiority  of  his  own  order  any  more  than  the 
serving-priest  of  Christian  churches  must  question 
the  divinity  of  the  Eucharist.  If  you  do  not  believe 
in  yourself,  who  will  believe  in  you  ? 

The  young  prince  now  passing  between  the  two 
lines  of  cheering  people  did  not  believe  in  himself, 
nor  in  his  order,  nor  in  his  family,  nor  in  any  supe- 
riority of  his  or  theirs.  The  enthusiasm  of  the 
crowds  left  him  cold,  for  he  rightly  regarded  such 
enthusiasm  as  too  similar  to  the  blind  worship  of 
trees  and  stones  and  carven  woods  by  barbaric  races, 
to  be  worth  anything  in  the  estimation  of  a  reasonable 
being.  It  was  fetish-worship :  nothing  else.  That 
he  himself  was  the  fetish  at  the  moment  could  not 
make  the  superstition  any  more  worthy  in  his  sight. 

Three  thousand  years  earlier  the  people  of  Egypt 
had  thus  clamoured  in  praise  of  their  Pharaohs : 
where  was  the  progress  of  the  human  race  ?  Why 
must  humanity  always  have  a  fetish  of  some  sort  ? 
Why  ?  It  would  perplex  the  wisest  philosopher  to 
say.  Bisons  and  buffaloes  in  a  natural  state  of  exist- 
ence elect  a  monarch,  we  are  told ;  but  they  are  said 
to  take  the  strongest,  greatest,  finest  of  the  herd. 
Men  do  not  do  this;  they  cannot  do  it;  for  a  civilised 
man,  being  a  complicated  creature,  is  apt  to  lack  in 
one  thing  in  proportion  to  what  he  possesses  in 
another.  If  the  successful  fighter  be  selected  by 
them,  as  by  the  bison  or  buffalo,  they  get  a  Welling- 
ton who  becomes  a  failure  in  politics  ;  or  if  they 
take  the  man  of  genius,  they  get  a  Lamartine  or  a 
Disraeli ;  or  even  if  they  obtain  a  Napoleon,  power 
goes  to  their  Napoleon's  head  and  all  is  red  ruin. 


8  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

So,  in  fear  of  the  unusual,  they  cling  to  the  ordi- 
nary conventional  hereditary  person,  and  endow  him 
with  imaginary  qualities,  and  hedge  him  about  with 
symbols,  and  functions,  and  office-holders,  and  make- 
belief  of  all  kinds.  The  bison  and  buffalo  would 
not  be  satisfied  with  this ;  but  man  is,  or  at  least  the 
majority  of  men  are. 

f  Is  that  one  of  the  King's  sons  ? '  asked  a  foreigner 
speaking  ill  the  language  of  the  country. 

The  artisan  to  whom  he  spoke  understood  the 
question,  despite  the  ugly  accent  of  the  stranger. 

c  Who  are  you,  that  you  do  not  know  Elim  ? '  he 
replied. 

4  Elim  ? '  repeated  the  foreigner,  not  compre- 
hending. 

f  Prince  Elim,'  repeated  the  man.     (  Our  Elim.' 

f  The  Duke  of  Othyris,'  added  another  working- 
man.  ORTIKWtf 

'  Oh,  to  be  sure,'  said  the  stranger,  c  the  Heir 
Presumptive,  is  he  not  ? ' 

c  The  most  popular  person  in  the  country,'  said  an 
idler,  who  had  a  carnation  between  his  teeth. 

*  He  seems  very  popular  indeed,'  said  the  foreigner, 
with  interrogation  in  his  tone. 

£  All  the  family  are,'  said  the  idler  with  the  carna- 
tion drily ;  then,  catching  from  under  the  white  cap 
of  one  who  was  dressed  like  a  cook  from  a  restaurant 
a  sharp  glance,  which  seemed  to  him  that  of  a  spy  in 
disguise,  he  raised  his  hat  and  said  reverently, '  Christ 
have  them  all  in  His  keeping.' 

The  foreigner  was  touched.  f  And  they  say  these 
people  are  malcontents  and  revolutionaries !  '  he 
murmured  to  a  companion,  as  he  stooped  to  pick 
up  a  rose  which  had  been  thrown  from  a  window 


i  HELIANTHUS  9 

to  the  carriage  of  the   Duke  of  Othyris,  and  had 
missed  its  goal. 

•  'The  malcontents  have  muzzles  on,'  said  his  friend. 
4  Sixteen  hundred  men  were  clapped  in  prison  before 
the  Emperor's  arrival,  and  some  thousands  are  con- 
fined to  their  own  houses.' 

f  But  it  is  a  constitutional  country  ! '  protested 
the  traveller  from  overseas. 

f  Oh,  yes,'  answered  the  other,  'on  paper  and  in 
theory  ! ' 

1  Circulate,  circulate,  circulate ! '  said  the  gen- 
darmes, imitating  their  brethren  of  the  larger  capitals 
of  Europe,  and  enforcing  their  order  with  thrusts 
from  their  elbows,  or  from  the  pommels  of  their 
sabres,  into  the  ribs  or  the  chests  of  the  people. 

The  glow  from  the  western  sky  died  down,  the 
shadows  lengthened  and  crept  upward  to  the  zinc 
roofs;  the  balconies  were  emptied,  the  electric  light 
flashed  suddenly  down  the  whole  street,  and  made 
the  faces  of  the  multitude  look  hard,  jaded,  pallid, 
dejected  ;  a  dull  silence  fell  on  the  populace,  a  silence 
in  which  the  rumbling  of  the  tram-cars,  readmitted 
to  movement  after  half-a-day's  exclusion,  sounded  like 
a  caricature  of  the  artillery  which  had  passed  down 
there  twenty 'minutes  before.  The  tired  children 
cried,  the  hustled  women  sighed,  the  men  who  had 
been  knocked  about  by  fists  and  sabres  went  sullenly 
homeward,  the  wounded  were  carried  into  hospital ; 
the  festivities  were  over. 

From  the  open  windows  of  the  palaces  and  hotels 
arose  a  steam  and  scent  of  good  things  to  eat  and 
good  wines  to  drink,  and  spread  itself  through  all  the 
length  of  the  street,  mingling  with,  and  overpowering, 
the  odours  of  flowers,  and  powder,  and  hot  human 


io  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

and  equine  flesh.  It  made  many  of  the  poorer  sight- 
seers in  the  crowd  feel  hungry,  more  hungry  than 
ever ;  and  it  made  the  little  tired  children  cry  louder 
to  go  home. 

c  The  Romans  gave  bread  as  well  as  the  Circus,' 
thought  Elim,  Duke  of  Othyris,  as  his  carriage  turned 
in  at  his  palace  gates.  '  We  are  more  economical. 
We  only  give  the  Circus,  and  even  that  we  run  for 
our  own  use.' 

The  sound  of  cheering  in  the  distance  rolled  down 
the  soft  air  and  sounded  like  repeated  firing. 

What  were  they  cheering  now  ?  Who  ?  Why  ? 
At  that  instant  the  crowd  gathered  before  his  own 
residence  in  the  Square  of  the  Dioscuri  was  cheering 
himself;  but  that  made  the  ovation  seem  no  wiser 
to  him. 

What  was  that  clamour  worth  ? 

Ten  minutes  earlier  they  had  cheered  his  father 
and  his  imperial  cousin.  They  had  cheered  equally 
the  great  artillery  guns,  and  the  sweating  battery 
horses,  although  they  knew  well  enough  that  if  they 
themselves  offended  authority,  the  guns  would  belch 
red  death  on  to  them,  and  the  horses  be  driven,  under 
the  slashing  whip-cord,  over  their  fallen  bodies. 

'  Oh  fools  !  Oh  fools  ! '  he  said  to  himself,  as  he 
who  pities  humanity  is  always  driven  in  sorrow,  or  in 
anger,  or  in  both,  to  say  it.  Panem  et  Circenses ! 
It  is  always  the  old  story.  Caesar  may  use  up  their 
bodies  on  his  battlefields,  and  grind  their  souls  to  dust 
under  his  tyrannies,  if  he  give  them  the  arena — even 
without  the  bread.  So  long  as  he  pleases  their  fancies, 
or  dazzles  their  eyes,  they  will  cheer  him ;  and  they 
are  pleased  by  so  little,  and  dazzled  by  such  tawdry 
tinsel !  Why  did  the  people  flock  to  see  this  very 


i  HELIANTHUS  n 

paltry  pageant  ?  Why  did  not  the  men  go  about 
their  work  or  their  business,  and  the  women  shut 
their  windows  ?  No  one  could  force  them  to  turn 
out  in  their  thousands,  and  waste  a  whole  day  ;  and 
if  they  were  not  there  to  line  the  streets,  and  be 
hustled  by  the  police,  Caesar  might  arrive  at  a  juster 
view  of  his  own  actual  values  and  proportions. 
There  is  much  they  cannot  do  ;  but  some  things 
they  might  do ;  and  to  stay  indoors  on  a  day  like 
this  is  one  of  them. 

The  traveller  from  a  distant  continent,  which  is 
called  a  new  country,  probably  because  it  was  old 
when  Atlantis  was  submerged,  went  to  dine  at  a 
restaurant  which  was  modelled  on  the  eating-places 
of  that  great  Guthonic  empire  ruled  by  the  Emperor 
Julius  ;  the  cooks  were  Guthonic,  the  waiters  were 
Guthonic,  even  the  wines,  which  were  Helianthine, 
were  labelled  by  Guthonic  names.  The  annexing  of 
a  nation  usually  begins  with  its  bills  of  fare. 

The  stranger  from  overseas  was  curious,  and 
questioned  the  attendant  who  brought  him  his  coffee 
and  cognac. 

'  What  was  it,'  he  asked,  *  that  happened  on  the 
Field  of  Ares  to-day,  and  made  the  public  give  such 
an  enthusiastic  reception  to  the  King's  second  son  ? ' 

*  There  was  an  unfortunate  incident  during  the 
march  past,  sir,'  replied  the  man,  seeing  that  the 
amount  of  money  left  for  him  on  the  salver  was 
generous.  *  I  do  not  know  details.  Some  country 
folks  got  across  the  line  of  the  defile ;  the  Duke 
stopped  his  squadrons  and  occupied  himself  with 
the  safety  of  the  people  and  their  beasts  ;  the  cavalry 
division  was  in  consequence  some  minutes  late  ;  it 
made  a  break  in  the  march  past ;  it  is  said  His 


12  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

Majesty  was  displeased  at  the  breach  of  discipline.' 
t  Perhaps  he  is  jealous  of  his  son's  greater  popu- 
larity ? ' 

4  The  King  is  very  popular,  sir,'  said  the  waiter 
with  discretion. 

'  Is  that  so  ? '  said  the  visitor,  incredulous.  (  The 
King  is  a  very  strict  disciplinarian,  they  say  ? ' 

*  He  is  considered  so  :  yes,  sir.' 

*  But  would  he  have  had  his  son  see  his  subjects 
trampled  to  death  before  his  eyes  without  an  effort 
to  save  them  ? ' 

f  I  believe,  sir,  His  Majesty  does  not  think  any- 
thing of  so  much  importance  as  military  exactitude ; 
and  the  persons  who  would  have  been  run  over 
were  very  low  people — cowherds  or  swineherds,  I 
believe/ 

c  I  understand  why  the  nation  prefers  his  son  to 
himself,'  said  the  foreigner  with  a  smile. 

*  Oh,  sir,  I  never  said  that  the  Duke  was  pre- 
ferred ! ' 

*  But   he   is  so,  my  friend.     What   a   difference 
there  was  in  the  cheering  ! ' 

The  attendant  took  his  fee  off  the  salver  and  was 
discreetly  silent. 

£  I  guess  he  is  a  fine  fellow,  that  Duke,'  said  the 
traveller,  as  he  rose,  took  his  cane  and  overcoat,  and 
went  out  on  to  the  broad  white  marble  quay  where 
the  tamarisks  and  the  magnolias  showed  the  blue 
water  between  their  trunks ;  that  blue  water  which 
has  been  the  Mare  Magnum  of  two  thousand  years 
of  history. 

The  waiter  saw  him  go  out  with  relief;  this  kind 
of  conversation  is  dangerous  in  Helianthus,  which  is 
a  free  country. 


i  HELIANTHUS  13 

The  traveller  might  say  what  he  chose,  thought  the 
man ;  it  was  a  serious  thing  to  interrupt  and  delay  a 
march  past,  merely  because  some  common  folks  might 
have  been  injured.  It  was  quite  natural  that  King 
John  should  be  very  angry,  and  report  said  that 
King  John  when  angry  was  as  unpleasant  to  encounter 
as  the  wild  boar  which  was  the  emblem  of  his  royal 
house. 

The  waiter,  having  imbibed  bourgeois  and  con- 
ventional opinion  as  he  imbibed  heel-taps,  admired 
this  characteristic.  It  seemed  to  him  truly  imperial. 

For  in  this  world  there  would  be  no  tyrants  if 
there  were  no  toadies. 


CHAPTER   II 

THE  people's  favourite,  on  reaching  his  own  resi- 
dence, changed  his  uniform  for  plain  clothes,  drank 
some  soda  water,  and  took  his  way,  as  the  Ave 
Maria  rang  over  the  city  from  a  thousand  churches, 
chapels  and  bell-towers,  to  the  palace  in  which 
his  royal  father  dwelt,  which  was  known  as  the 
Soleia. 

The  Soleia  was  a  group  of  castles,  halls,  and 
temples,  which  were  built  round  the  great  central 
edifice  of  which  the  dome  glistened  with  gilded 
oriental  tiles,  and  could  be  seen  many  miles  off 
from  either  the  mountains  or  the  sea.  It  was  a 
wondrous  unison  of  many  styles  and  ages,  beginning 
with  the  Byzantine  ;  palace  built  on  palace  as  beavers' 
dwellings  cluster  on  each  other.  In  one  of  these 
resided  the  Crown  Prince  and  Princess  of  Helianthus. 
It  was  thither  that  Othyris  was  bent. 

( Who  knows,'  he  thought,  '  what  they  may  not 
have  told  her,  and  what  fears  are  not  agitating  her 
good,  kind,  buckram-bound  heart  ? ' 

He  took  a  short  path  across  the  gardens  of  the 
Soleia  to  the  portion  of  it  occupied  by  his  sister-in- 
law  and  his  brother  Theodoric,  the  heir  to  the  throne. 

The  Crown  Prince  was  the  only  scion  of  a  first 
alliance  contracted  in  early  youth  with  a  princess  of  a 

14 


CHAP,  ii  HELIANTHUS  15 

small  northern  State  now  mediatised  and  merged  in 
a  great  Power.  His  mother  had  died  in  the  third 
year  of  her  marriage,  having  reproduced  in  her  son  ex- 
actly her  own  character,  grafted  on  to  that  of  John  of 
Gunderode,  whose  shrewd  talents,  however,  were  not 
inherited  ;  for  the  Crown  Prince  was  what  would  have 
been  called  in  an  ordinary  mortal,  stupid.  He  had 
the  hopelessly  unillumined  and  incorrigible  dulness 
which  comes  from  a  naturally  narrow  brain,  budded  on 
the  platitudes  of  conventional  education  and  manured 
by  the  heating  phosphates  of  flattery.  He  had  an 
implicit  belief  in  his  knowledge  and  judgment,  and 
was  completely  satisfied  as  to  his  indispensable  utility 
to  his  nation.  In  appearance  he  was  a  tall,  well-built, 
spare,  and  very  muscular  man,  red  of  hair  and  ruddy  of 
skin,  rigid  and  stiff  in  movement ;  his  forehead  was 
low,  his  jaw  was  prominent ;  he  had  little  intelligence, 
little  comprehension  ;  he  had  immense  belief  in  him- 
self, in  his  family,  in  his  caste ;  he  was  religious, 
chaste,  absorbed  in  his  duties  ;  to  his  soldiers  he  was 
brutal,  but  that,  he  considered,  was  at  once  their 
good  and  his  own  privilege.  He  had  wedded  a 
cousin-german,  a  princess  of  a  neighbouring  empire; 
he  had  by  her  only  two  female  children  ;  this  was 
the  greatest  chagrin  of  his  life.  Excellent  as  his 
morality  was,  he  could  not  suppress  a  sense  of 
pleasurable  hope  whenever  his  wife  took  cold.  Being 
a  conscientious  and  religious  person,  he  did  not  allow 
his  mind  to  dwell  on  the  contingencies  which  might 
arise  out  of  a  fatal  illness ;  but  the  sentiment  of  pleasur- 
able expectation,  whenever  she  coughed,  was  there. 

The  Crown  Princess  was  by  birth  Guthonic,  a 
cousin-german  of  the  great  Julius.  She  was  a 
homely-looking  woman  of  thirty-two  years  of  age  ; 


16  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

she  had  a  plain  face,  pale  blue  eyes,  and  a  high 
colour ;  she  dressed  with  great  simplicity  on  all 
except  State  occasions,  and  had  a  kindly  and  simple 
manner,  which  could,  however,  on  occasion  become 
cold  and  dignified  though  always  bland. 

She  was  sitting  by  an  open  glass  door,  knitting 
a  stocking  for  a  poor  child;  she  wore  a  gown  of 
grey  stuff  with  a  white  linen  collar  and  cuffs ;  she 
seemed  to  take  pleasure  in  accentuating  her  own 
homeliness  and  want  of  grace  and  of  colour.  She  had 
nothing  to  distinguish  her  from  any  good  and  homely 
housewife  in  the  northern  kingdom  whence  she 
came.  Her  brother-in-law  loved  her  for  her 
sincerity,  simplicity,  and  goodness ;  and  she  was 
attached  to  him  by  the  law  of  contrast,  and  by  her 
gratitude  for  his  unwavering  regard  and  loyalty  to 
her.  She  looked  troubled  and  anxious.  The  lady 
who  was  with  her  withdrew  at  a  sign  from  her  as  her 
brother-in-law  entered. 

*  Oh,  my  dear  Elim ! '  she  said  as  soon  as  her 
lady  had  withdrawn.  f  What  is  this  I  hear?  You 
caused  a  break  in  the  march  past?  Is  it  possible? 
I  have  heard  no  details.  Pray  tell  me  all !  ' 

He  laughed  irreverently. 

'  Yes.  I  am  guilty  of  that  monstrous  crime.  Some 
peasants,  Heaven  knows  how,  got  in  the  way  of  the 
d'efil'e ;  I  had  either  to  crush  them  or  to  stop  my 
squadrons.  Who  could  hesitate  ? ' 

f  What  a  dreadful  alternative ! '  said  the  Crown 
Princess  with  agitation. 

1 1  see  nothing  very  dreadful  about  it.  It  is  one  of 
those  matters  which  only  assume  importance  in  the 
eyes  of  a  military  martinet.  The  difference  in  time 
was  perhaps  five  minutes/ 


ii  HELIANTHUS  17 

'  But,  as  I  understand  it,  you  were  leading  the 
Light  Cavalry  Division  ? ' 

«  Yes.' 

The  Princess  looked  anxious.  *  It  is  a  great 
military  offence.' 

He  laughed. 

*  If  they  cashier  me,  how  happy  I   shall  be  !     If 
they  send  me  to  a   fortress,  I   shall  have  time   to 
translate  Tibullus,  which  I  have  always  wished  to 
do.' 

4  You  are  too  flippant  and  reckless,  Elim.' 

'  I  should  have  thought  that  you  at  least ' 

he  said,  and  paused,  leaving  the  sentence  unfinished. 

cYou  thought  that  I  should  approve  your  action, 
as  the  people  do  ?  Well,  perhaps  I  do,  in  my  heart. 
I  think  you  acted  naturally,  mercifully,  heroically. 
But  being  what  you  are,  and  where  you  were,  it 
was  foolhardy  ;  and  to  —  to  my  husband  and  to  your 
father,  it  appears  an  outrageous  offence.' 

c  Because  I  offended  the  Deity  of  Discipline ! 
Because  I  momentarily  broke  the  order  of  the  march 
past !  La  belle  affaire  I  Why  do  they  make  me 
dress  up  in  uniform  ?  Why  do  they  not  leave  me 
in  peace  in  my  painting-room  ?  I  abhor  soldiering ; 
I  abhor  militarism ;  I  am  a  man ;  I  am  not  a 
machine.  They  may  break  me.  They  will  not 
bend  me.' 

1 1  am  sorry/  said  the  Crown  Princess,  and  her 
sad,  plain,  kind  countenance  was  clouded. 

*  Sorry  that  I  did  not  sit  still  in  my  saddle  like 
a   figure   of  wood,   and   see   men   and   women   and 
cattle  stamped  and  crushed  under  the  rush  of  the 
regiments  I  commanded  ?      My  dear  Gertrude,  that 
is  very  unlike  you.' 


1 8  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

'  But  it  was  not  your  affair.  It  was  not  the  fitting 
moment  for  compassion.' 

f  You  say  that  very  feebly,  and  I  hear  the  voice 
of  your  husband  speaking  from  your  lips  !  Do  not 
deny  your  own  feelings,  and  repeat  like  a  parrot,  my 
dear  sister ;  such  cruelty  is  unworthy  of  you.' 

'  But '  said  the  Princess,  and  signed,  for  she 

had  been  born  and  brought  up  in  the  rigidity  of  a 
military  dominion,  in  the  superstitions  of  a  military 
caste.  For  a  soldier  to  leave  the  ranks,  for  a  com- 
manding officer  to  interrupt  a  military  display,  seemed 
to  her  a  violation  of  laws  still  more  sacred  than  the 
laws  of  nature  or  the  dictates  of  mercy.  *  But  you 
caused  a  break  in  the  march  past,  a  pause  in  the 
review,  a  breach  in  continuity,  unexplained,  inexcus- 
able. Theo  says  that  the  Emperor  smiled  !  Imagine 
what  your  father  must  have  felt  when  he  saw  that 
smile  ! ' 

1  Julius  is  our  pedagogue  and  our  War-lord,  as  we 
all  know,'  said  Othyris  with  irritation.  {  But  I  think 
we  should  not  smart  so  easily  under  his  smiles  or  his 
frowns.' 

The  Crown  Princess  sighed.  She  did  not  love 
Julius,  who  was  her  cousin  both  by  marriage  and  by 
consanguinity,  but  she  knew  that  Julius  was  an  un- 
known quantity  and  potent  factor  in  the  future  of 
Helianthus  and  of  Europe.  No  flippancy  or  ridicule 
from  Elim  could  alter  that  fact,  or  say  what  that 
future  would  become. 

'  My  dear  Gertrude,'  said  Othyris  with  some  im- 
patience, *  let  us  leave  the  subject.  I  may  have  done 
what  was  wrong.  At  all  events  I  did  what  my 
conscience  suggested  to  me  in  a  moment  when  there 
was  no  time  for  reflection.  I  imagine  the  herdsmen 


ii  HELIANTHUS  19 

think  that  I  did  right  as  they  go  through  the  meadows 
this  evening.' 

The  Princess  sighed. 

*  Yes ;  oh,  yes,  poor  creatures  !  But,  my  dear 
Elim,  reflect ;  if  you  commanded  a  division  in  an 
invading  army  you  would  be  compelled  to  burn,  to 
pillage,  to  destroy,  to  commit  what  in  peace  would 
be  crimes,  but  in  war  become  necessary  and  legitimate 
actions,  even  admirable  actions,  however  much  to  be 
regretted.  Well,  a  review  is  mimic  war,  and,  like 
what  it  mimics,  it  cannot  have  place  or  pause  for 
humanity.' 

1 1  shall  not  be  obliged  to  burn,  to  pillage,  to 
destroy ;  for  I  will  never  go  out  on  any  offensive 
campaign.' 

1  Oh,  my  dear  !  You  will  have  to  go  if  you  are 
ordered.' 

'  Not  at  all.  I  can  let  them  blow  me  from  a  gun, 
or  shut  me  up  in  a  fortress.' 

'  Do  not  say  such  things,  I  entreat  you  ! '  said  his 
sister-in-law  with  a  shudder.  She  knew  that  any 
day  the  pleasure  of  Julius  or  of  the  financiers,  or 
the  fear  of  internal  troubles,  might  force  the  Helian- 
thine  government  into  war  with  some  neighbour,  a 
war  of  attack  of  which  no  man  living  could  foretell 
the  issue. 

'  There  are  times  when  we  must  not  listen  to  our 
hearts,  nor  even  to  our  consciences,'  she  added 
timidly.  '  There  are  times  when  duty  requires  us 
to  be  even  cruel,  to  be  even  sinful,  when  to  be  what 
you  call  a  machine  is  the  sole  supreme  obligation 
upon  us.' 

'  A  shocking  creed  !  It  may  be  stretched  to  ex- 
cuse any  crime.' 


20  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

c  But  to  give  way  to  every  impulse  may  also 
lead  to  any  crime.' 

£  Not  if  the  impulse  be  good,  be  impersonal.  I 
know  very  well  what  you  mean.  It  is  the  theory  of 
all  persons  like  your  husband  and  like  my  father,  who 
place  machinery  before  men,  who  value  appearances 
and  are  blind  to  facts,  who  think  a  button  awry  or 
a  tape  untied,  more  terrible  than  any  catastrophe  to 
the  populace.' 

c  A  valve  is  a  small  thing ;  but  on  its  opening  or 
shutting  correctly  depends  the  safety  of  an  express- 
train  or  of  an  ocean  steamer.' 

f  Let  us  quit  metaphors.  They  are  unsatisfactory 
in  argument.  Tell  me  plainly,  Gertrude,  would  you 
have  had  me  gallop  on  at  the  head  of  my  squadrons, 
and  see  people  —  our  people,  for  whose  wellbeing 
my  family  is  responsible  —  crushed  to  pulp  under 
my  troopers'  chargers  a  few  yards  off  me  ?  ' 

His  sister-in-law  hesitated ;  over  her  homely, 
melancholy  features  a  wave  of  colour  rose  and 
receded. 

£I  am  reluctant  to  say  it;  but  I  think  —  yes, — 
I  do  think  at  that  moment  you  were  not  your  own 
master  to  move  and  to  act.  You  were  only  an  officer 
of  the  King,  entrusted  with  a  high  command.' 

He  turned  away  from  the  sofa  on  which  she  sat, 
and  paced  the  room  with  irritation.  In  the  voice  of 
this  good  woman  whom  he  loved  and  respected  he 
hated  to  hear  the  conventional  gospel  which  had  been 
dinned  into  his  ears  ever  since  his  long  curls  had 
been  cut  off,  on  the  day  after  his  sixth  birthday,  and 
he  had  been  taken  away  from  his  toys  and  his  nurses, 
his  dogs  and  his  guinea  pigs,  and  given  over  into  the 
charge  of  a  civil  governor  and  a  military  tutor. 


n  HELIANTHUS  21 

'  What  a  monstrous  theory  for  a  gentle  and  kind 
woman  like  you  to  hold  ! '  he  cried. 
She  answered  with  a  sigh  : 

*  There  are  times,  my  dear,  when  a  man,  above  all 
a  prince,  above  all  a  soldier,  does  not  belong  to  him- 
self at  all,  but  entirely  to  his  duties,  entirely  to  the 
sovereign,  to  the  State,  to  the  army.' 

He  laughed  a  brief  strident  laugh  which  it  hurt 
her  to  hear. 

*  Unhappy    man,    and    thrice    unhappy    prince ! 
A  soldier  I  am  not,'  he  added :  *  they  dress  me  up 
as  one ;  they  do  not  make  me  one.     How  well  I 
know  it,   Gertrude,   that   religion   of  formula,   that 
doctrine  of  self-abasement,  that  negation  of  manhood, 
that  lifting  up  on  high  of  an  idol  more  cruel  than  the 
serpent  of  brass,  and  more  ludicrous  than  any  black 
wooden  eyeless  Madonna  !     It  has  been  preached  to 
me  for  over  a  score  of  years,  and  always  in  vain. 
My  mind  rejects  it ;  my  sense  despises  it ;  my  con- 
science repulses  it.     It  may  take  effect  on  others.     It 
takes  none  on  me.      I  am  a  wild  goat  amongst  sheared 
sheep.     You  know  it/ 

The  Crown  Princess  sighed. 

She  was  a  good  woman ;  warm  of  heart,  con- 
scientious in  self-judgment,  liberal  of  hand ;  but, 
good  woman  though  she  was,  habit  and  caste  had 
encrusted  her  mind,  as  an  object  is  encrusted  in  a 
petrifying  spring. 

She  loved  Elim  despite  his  heresies,  and  she  owed 
him  much ;  the  debt  of  a  solitary  woman  for  sym- 
pathy which  can  never  be  forgotten.  He  had  been 
only  a  boy  when  she  had  come  to  the  Court  of 
Helianthus,  the  victim  of  a  conventional  union,  of 
a  political  alliance ;  a  shy,  sad,  and  serious  young 


22  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

woman,  conscious  of  her  want  of  beauty  and  her  lack 
of  charm,  reserved  by  nature  and  timid  from  habitual 
restraint.  The  kindness  and  sweetness  of  the  Queen, 
and  the  good  nature  and  good-will  of  Elim,  had  been 
her  consolation  and  support  in  what  she  had  felt  to 
be  a  painful  exile,  an  almost  friendless  solitude.  The 
beautiful  Queen  was  dead;  but  her  memory  re- 
mained, as  her  life  had  been,  a  tie  between  her  son 
and  the  northern  Princess. 

*  Do   I   worry  you  ? '   he  said  with  compunction. 

*  You  pay  the  penalty,  my  poor  sister,  of  being  the 
only  person  in  all  the  family  who  invites  confidence. 
Let  us  forget  this  little  incident,  and  let  us  be  glad 
that  the  peasants  and  their  lambs  and  milch-cows  got 
away  with  unbroken  bones.      How  are  Helene  and 
Olga  ?     May  I  see  them  ? ' 

*  They  are  at  their  studies,  we  must  not  disturb 
them,'  said  the  mother  of  the  little  girls.     *  You  may 
pity  me  too,  Elim.     The  pressure  of  the  iron  cylinder 
rolls  over  my  children  also,  and  pushes  them  away 
from  me.     But  it  must  be  so.      It  is  necessary.      It  is 
inevitable.      It  is  in  interests  which  rank  higher  than 
my  pleasure  or  my  affection.' 

'  Poor  victim  of  Juggernaut ! '  said  Othyris  with 
a  smile  which  was  at  once  indulgent  and  ironical. 

*  What   a   beautiful   evening !      Let  us  go   for  ten 
minutes  into  the  gardens  and  forget  our  harness.' 

*  Is  there  time  ? '  she  said  anxiously,  looking  at  the 
little  crystal  ball   of  her  watch ;  her  entire  existence 
was  regulated  by  clock-work.     f  I  fear  there  is  not 
time.' 

'  Oh,  yes ;  time  at  least  for  a  little  stroll,'  said 
Othyris  as  he  went  out  on  to  the  terrace  of  rose- 
granite,  with  balustrades  of  porphyry  columns, 


ii  HELIANTHUS  23 

which  stretched  before  the  windows.  Beneath  its 
wide  hemicircle  of  stairs,  bordered  by  palms  and 
yuccas,  stretched  the  flowers,  the  lawns,  the  ponds, 
and  statues,  and  fountains,  of  the  southern  side  of  the 
royal  gardens ;  beyond  these  were  masses  of  varied 
foliage  of  ornamental  trees;  and  still  beyond  these 
again,  the  shimmering  silver  of  the  sea,  calm  and 
heaving  gently  underneath  the  violet  sky  in  which  a 
young  moon  had  risen.  The  city  might  have  been  a 
thousand  miles  away  for  any  suggestion  that  there 
was  of  it,  or  any  murmur  of  its  restless  crowds.  On 
a  life-sized  group  of  Aphrodite  mourning  the  dead 
Adonis,  the  clear  soft  light  of  the  early  summer  evening 
was  shining ;  the  statue  was  of  the  period  which  is 
called  debased  Greek  art,  but  it  was  very  beautiful 
despite  its  epoch. 

'  How  like  you  are  to  the  Adonis,  Elim  ! '  said  the 
Princess  as  they  passed  the  group. 

'  So  my  dear  mother  used  to  say.  So  my  flatterers 
still  say.' 

*  I  never  flatter  you,  Elim.' 

f  Dear,  you  have  the  only  flattery  which  is  really 
sweet  and  wholesome,  which  is  true  flower-made 
honey  that  does  not  cloy :  a  too  indulgent  affection. 
Would  to  Heaven  I  were  of  marble  like  the  Adonis, 
or  of  petrified  wood  like  your  beloved  husband  ! ' 

They  went  down  the  steps  of  one  of  the  terraces 
and  walked  on  by  an  avenue  of  tulip-trees ;  at  its 
end  was  a  small  classic  temple  looking  out  on  to 
the  western  sea,  on  which  the  after-glow  of  a  spring- 
tide day  was  still  roseate. 

'How  we  waste  our  time,  how  we  lose  our 
summers  ! '  said  Othyris  as  he  gazed  across  the  sea,  so 
warm  and  bright  in  the  light  of  the  early  eve.  *  We 


2.4  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

have  only  just  come  in  from  the  dust  of  the  Field  of 
Ares,  and  we  must  go  and  sit  behind  gold  plate  with 
the  evening  light  shut  out  that  electric  fuses  may 
burn.' 

The  Princess  did  not  contradict  him.  How  happy 
she  would  have  been  walking  with  her  two  little  girls 
along  a  country  lane,  talking  with  them  of  field  flowers 
and  hedge  birds,  and  seeing  the  slow  and  pensive 
twilight  of  her  northern  home  steal  softly  over  furrow 
and  hamlet  and  sheepfold ! 

On  the  silver  field  of  the  serene  water  of  the  gulf 
there  was  a  vessel,  dark  in  the  luminous  blue  of  the 
early  night.  It  was  a  fishing-vessel,  and  on  a  wooden 
gallery  in  its  bow  a  man  was  standing,  whilst  other 
boatmen  rowed.  In  his  raised  hand  was  a  long  spear. 
The  barque  was  moving  swiftly,  turning  now  to 
leeward,  now  to  windward. 

'They  are  chasing  a  sword-fish,'  said  Othyris. 
c  We  cannot  see  the  fish,  but  they  can.  To  think  that 
this  chase  has  gone  on  for  twenty  centuries  and  more, 
in  precisely  the  same  manner  in  these  same  waters ! ' 

The  vessel  glided  out  of  the  light  into  the  shadow, 
and  the  figure  of  the  spear-thrower  was  lost  in  the 
deeper  blue  of  the  shade;  there  only  remained  visible 
the  two  starboard  oars  dipping  into  and  flashing  with 
the  phosphorescent  water. 

f  They  do  not  often  succeed  in  taking  him,'  said 
Othyris.  £  He  is  difficult  to  see  even  by  day,  kind 
nature  made  him  so  blue.  But  the  kindness  of 
nature  is  generally  thwarted  by  the  ingenuity  of 
man,  by  the  devilry  of  mankind.' 

c  Poor  Xiphias  ! '  he  added  :  f  he  is  a  soldier  too 
in  his  way,  but  he  fights  with  the  weapon  which 
nature  gave  him,  and  he  attacks  bigger  creatures  than 


ii  HELIANTHUS  25 

himself.  He  is  a  chivalrous  knight  compared  to  the 
war-makers  of  our  time.  I  wish  the  fishermen  would 
leave  him  alone.  Yet  those  men  yonder  are  to  be 
excused.  They  are  hungry,  they  have  children 
as  hungry  at  home.  But  what  do  you  say  to  our 
sister  Ottoline,  who  goes  out  with  them  for  the  sheer 
pleasure  of  seeing  the  agonies  of  the  poor  gallant 
Xiphias  ?  She  has  even  learnt  to  throw  the  harpoon 
herself!' 

1  There  is  nothing  to  excuse  it.  For,  in  her  choice, 
there  is  neither  ignorance  nor  compulsion,'  said  the 
Princess  sadly,  and  looked  at  her  watch  by  the  light 
of  the  moon.  '  I  fear  I  must  go  in,  my  dear  ;  there 
will  be  only  twenty  minutes  left  for  me  to  put  on 
my  war-paint.' 

4 1  have  a  mind  to  stay  here,'  said  Othyris,  gazing 
wistfully  at  the  sea.  c  What  would  happen  if  I  failed 
to  appear  ? ' 

'  For  goodness'  sake  do  not  have  such  freaks  of 
fancy,'  said  his  sister-in-law  in  anxiety.  t  You  would 
see  the  sun  rise  from  the  barred  window  of  some 
fortress.' 

(  Because  I  did  not  show  at  a  banquet  ?  What  an 
idea ! ' 

f  But  the  Emperor  is  our  guest,  our  cousin,  our 
ally  ! ' 

'  Our  suzerain?  said  Othyris  bitterly. 

f  Do  not  say  such  things,  dear  Elim,'  murmured 
his  sister-in-law.  *  Here  statues  have  ears,  and  trees 
have  tongues.  Come,  dear;  do  come,  to  please  me.' 

Othyris  looked  with  regret  to  the  beauty  of 
the  early  night,  to  the  phosphorescent  sea,  the  violet 
sky,  the  dark  outline  of  the  fishing-barque,  the 
marble  balustrades  and  statues  pale  and  cool  in  the 


26  HELIANTHUS  CHAR 

shadow,    then    reluctantly    accompanied    her    back 
towards  the  palace  by  the  avenue  of  tulip-trees. 

'  If  I  were  only  the  man  with  the  lance  on  the 
boat ! '  he  said,  *  but  without  the  penal  obligation  of 
slaying  the  sword-fish  ! ' 

*  And  do  you  not  think  the  man  with  the  lance 
says  or  thinks,  "  If  I  were  only  that  great   Prince 
yonder  amongst  his  roses  "  ? ' 

*  Perhaps  he  does,  poor  ignorant!     He  does  not 
know  that  the  Prince  has  not  a  moment  to  enjoy  the 
scent  of  the  roses  ! ' 

c  But,  Elim,'  said  his  sister-in-law  with  that  timidity 
which  always  characterised  her  utterance  of  any 
opinion  of  her  own,  *  do  you  not  think  that,  as  you 
fill  a  position  which  you  cannot  change,  and  as  you 
may  possibly  be  called  to  fill  one  still  more  trying 
and  arduous,  it  would  be  wiser,  merely  from  a 
common-sense  point  of  view,  to  cease  to  struggle 
against  what  you  cannot  possibly  alter  ?  —  neither 
you  nor  any  one  who  lives.' 

He  did  not  reply.  His  thoughts  went  farther 
than  he  chose  to  say  even  to  this  good  and  loyal 
woman. 

'Acquiescence  is  the  hardest  of  all  duties  to  any 
one  of  your  temperament,'  she  added.  '  But  if  a 
duty  be  not  hard  what  merit  is  there  in  accepting  its 
yoke?' 

c  I  do  not  see  either  duty  or  merit  in  this  in- 
stance ! ' 

<  My  dear  Elim  !  .  .  .' 

<  I  do  not/ 

c  Then  where ? ' 

c  Where  shall  I  look  for  them  ? '  Is  that  what 
you  would  say?  What  a  pity  I  cannot  find  them  as 


ii  HELIANTHUS  27 

Theo  does  in  regulation  belts  and  regimental  but- 
tons !  ' 

'  Theo  is  conscientious,'  said  Theo's  wife  with 
reproach. 

4  All  disagreeable  people  are  ! '  said  Othyris  with 
a  little  laugh. 

'  I  wish  you  would  not  laugh  at  Theo,'  said  Theo's 
wife  uneasily,  with  a  little  red  spot  in  each  thin  cheek. 

'  II  sy  -prete  !  '  said  Othyris  with  careless  way- 
wardness. 

c  Oh,  my  dear  Elim,  hush  !  '  said  Theo's  wife  in 
distress.  *  We  must  really  go  indoors,'  she  said 
nervously.  c  It  is  a  pity,  yes ;  like  you  I  should 
willingly  spend  the  evening  here.  But  one  has  no 
right  to  expect  to  be  idle.' 

c  We  are  worse  than  idle  ;  we  are  actively  mis- 
chievous. Can  there  be  a  greater  waste  of  time  or  a 
more  unpleasant  form  of  ennui  than  a  dinner  of 
sixteen  courses  for  persons  already  over-fed  ? ' 

She  did  not  reply,  but  hurried  back  towards  the 
terrace  ;  such  remarks  almost  seemed  to  her  to  suggest 
softening  of  the  brain;  to  her  a  great  dinner  was  a 
function,  like  a  church  ceremony,  or  the  opening  of 
a  new  session,  or  a  royal  baptism. 

Othyris  left  the  Soleia,  as  he  had  come  there,  by 
a  private  gate  which  opened  on  a  side  street ;  he  was 
unattended,  and  hoped  to  reach  his  own  palace  un- 
recognised. But  when  he  had  passed  through  the 
two  other  small  streets  lying  between  the  Soleia  and 
his  own  residence  he  was  seen  by  some  of  the  people 
standing  about  the  principal  road  leading  to  the 
Square  of  the  Dioscuri,  and  a  cheer  was  raised ;  his 
name  was  spoken;  others  joined  in  the  cheering;  soon 
the  applause  grew  deafening;  men,  women,  and 


28  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

children  ran  thither  from  all  parts,  and  the  rough 
rejoicings  rose  tumultuous  like  the  cawing  from  a 
rookery. 

He  was  provoked  with  himself  for  his  forgetful- 
ness  of  the  probability  of  such  a  demonstration. 
There  was  nothing  which  he  more  greatly  disliked, 
and  nothing  which  more  incensed  the  King  and  his 
elder  brother.  It  was  now  impossible  to  avoid  the 
people ;  they  had  recognised  him.  He  saluted  the 
populace  courteously,  but  signed  to  them  to  disperse. 
In  the  noise  from  their  lungs  no  speech  of  his  could 
be  heard.  He  was  vexed  with  himself  for  his  own 
heedlessness  in  coming  on  foot  from  the  gardens  to 
his  own  house.  He  knew  how  intensely  these  evi- 
dences of  his  own  popularity  offended  and  irritated 
his  father  and  his  brothers  ;  that  advantage  was  taken 
of  them  by  those  jealous  of  him ;  that  exaggeration 
was  used  by  the  socialistic  and  subversive  journals 
concerning  them. 

He  had  acted  on  an  impulse  of  humanity  that  day 
on  the  Field  of  Ares,  and  he  would  have  done  the 
same  thing  if  he  had  acted  on  reflection  ;  but  he 
knew  that  in  the  eyes  of  his  family  his  action  could 
only  seem  like  a  studied  attitude  to  please  the  people, 
a  politic  bid  for  public  favour.  All  his  actions  took 
that  complexion  in  their  sight. 

The  numbers  in  the  Square  increased  with  every 
second ;  the  municipal  police,  alarmed  at  a  demon- 
stration which  they  might  have,  but  had  not,  foreseen, 
endeavoured  to  push  their  way  towards  him ;  he 
himself  was  annoyed,  for  if  anything  would  have 
made  him  an  enemy  to  the  populace,  it  would  have 
been  their  methods  of  showing  their  enthusiasm  for 
himself. 


ii  HELIANTHUS  29 

He  motioned  aside  the  guards  when  they  at  last 
succeeded  in  reaching  him ;  communal  guards  with 
their  revolvers  in  their  hands  ready  to  use  them  and 
happy  to  do  so. 

*  Put  up    your  arms/  he  said    sharply.     c  There 
is  no  occasion  for  them.' 

The  multitude  heard  and  cheered  more  lustily, 
their  voices  pealing  over  the  wide  space,  the  shrill 
outcries  of  the  women  sounding  like  the  sound  of 
fifes,  the  chest  notes  of  the  stronger  men  like  the  roll 
of  drums. 

Fact  had  already  become  legend,  and  the  versions 
of  his  recent  action  on  the  Field  of  Ares  were  rapidly 
swelling  into  a  Heraklean  fable. 

4  Elim  !  Elim  !  Long  life  and  Heaven's  blessing 
to  Elim,  the  friend  of  the  people ! '  they  cried  in 
their  rhythmical  roar. 

By  signs  to  the  crowd,  and  with  a  smile,  he  made 
a  path  for  himself  towards  his  residence,  the  guards 
closing  in  behind  him,  forbidden  by  him  to  do  more. 
Sundry  of  his  gentlemen  and  some  of  the  officers  of 
his  division  came  out  to  meet  him,  elbowing  their 
way  to  release  him. 

The  electric  light  was  now  lit  and  illumined  the 
palms,  the  statues,  the  parterres  of  flowers,  the  great 
fountains,  the  agitated,  many-coloured,  dense  throng 
of  the  people. 

*  Speak  to  us !  speak  to  us ! '  they  shouted.     '  Speak 
to  us,  Elim  ! ' 

He  turned  round  before  his  own  gates,  and  again 
raised  his  hat  to  them. 

{ Not  now,  my  friends,'  he  said.  c  Thanks  for 
your  good-will ;  and  good-night  to  you.' 

The  people   murmured  loudly  and  many  swore 


30  JrlULlAIN  i  HUb  CHAP.  II 

in  their  wrath ;  but  the  great  bronze  gates  closed 
behind  him,  and  they  could  only  shout,  and  wave 
their  caps,  and  trample  on  one  another  in  the  cold, 
clear  light  shining  on  the  steel  tubes  of  the  guards' 
revolvers.  One  by  one,  little  by  little,  they  tired  of 
waiting,  and  dropped  away  into  the  streets  leading 
from  the  Square ;  a  few  hundred  remained  to  see  their 
idol  pass  in  his  carriage  to  the  Soleia,  to  the  banquet 
given  there  for  the  Emperor  of  the  Guthones. 


CHAPTER   III 

MEANWHILE  Elim's  father,  John,  King  of  Helian- 
thus,  sat  in  his  study  and  thought  over  the  matter 
with  extreme  offence  and  irritation.  He  was  a  short, 
stout,  well-made  man  of  nearly  sixty  years  of  age  ;  he 
had  a  plain  face,  a  dark  skin,  bristling  iron-grey  hair, 
and  a  high,  narrow  forehead  with  thick,  straight  eye- 
brows. Under  those  straight,  dark  brows  his  eyes 
looked  out  like  two  ever-vigilant  vedettes ;  they 
were  small  grey  eyes,  pale  in  colour,  half-hidden  by 
heavy  lids;  the  iris  was  touched  by  the  inflamed 
thread-like  veins  of  the  cornea,  but  they  were  eyes 
which  left  in  the  minds  of  those  at  whom  they  looked 
sharply  an  indescribable  impression  of  discomfort ; 
they  made  the  most  simple  and  sincere  of  persons 
feel  embarrassed  with  an  uneasy  sense  of  being 
detected  and  read  through  unpleasantly.  For  the 
rest  he  was  without  distinction  of  any  kind  ;  he 
looked  a  gentleman,  but  of  the  wealthy  bourgeois 
type ;  there  was  nothing  of  the  patrician  in  him 
except  his  fine  hands  and  slender  wrists ;  he  was 
inclined  to  corpulence,  and  only  overcame  that  royal 
defect  by  active  habits  and  his  devotion  to  the 
exercise  of  sport ;  he  smoked  almost  constantly, 
indoors  and  out,  for  he  knew  the  value  of  tobacco 
to  save  speech.  He  was  a  person  of  few  words  ; 

31 


32  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

words  compromise  oneself,  silence  embarrasses  others 
—  he  never  compromised  himself,  but  he  frequently 
embarrassed  others. 

He  ate  largely,  as  most  rulers  of  men  do ;  and  he 
drank  with  great  moderation,  at  such  times,  at  least, 
as  he  was  not  in  wrath ;  then  he  drank  brandy 
copiously.  After  his  mid-day  meal  he  slept  for 
an  hour ;  then  he  transacted  business  and  con- 
versed with  the  Ministers  of  the  moment;  then 
he  went  out  riding  or  driving,  usually  driving  him- 
self, with  fine  young  thorough-bred  horses,  whose 
nerves,  under  their  shining  over-groomed  skin, 
trembled  when  they  saw  him  approach  and  take  up 
the  ribbons. 

He  was  an  incongruous  figure  in  the  classic 
palaces,  the  grand,  silent,  romantic  gardens,  the 
majestic  galleries,  the  tapestried  corridors  of  his 
many  residences  in  Helianthus ;  as  incongruous  as  a 
British  sentry  on  duty  on  a  palm  terrace  of  Benares. 
But  he  did  not  see  it ;  or,  rather,  the  contrast,  so  far 
as  he  perceived  it,  seemed  to  him  entirely  to  his 
own  advantage. 

Outside  his  apartments,  avenues  of  crataegus  and 
paulownia,  masses  of  roses  and  datura,  fountains 
shining  through  the  glorious  gloom  of  secular  cedars, 
wide  lawns  sloping  down  from  sculptured  marble 
staircases,  deep  pools  sleeping  under  water-lilies,  the 
golden  and  silver  armour  of  fish  glancing  under  the 
arum  and  nenuphar  leaves  where  sun-rays  touched  the 
water,  statues  which  had  been  there  in  the  same  places 
since  first  called  into  being  by  classic  sculptors,  —  all 
offered  their  enchantment  to  his  sight.  But  he  never 
looked  at  them,  nor  walked  amidst  them ;  the 
electric  bells,  the  telephone  tubes,  the  innumerable 


in  HELIANTHUS  33 

scientific  devices  and  appliances  disfiguring  the 
frescoed  wall  at  the  back  of  his  writing-table,  were 
far  more  interesting  in  his  sight. 

John  of  Gunderode  was  not  a  man  of  great 
abilities;  but  he  was  a  great  egotist,  which  is  a  form 
of  talent,  and  he  was  exceedingly  shrewd  in  all 
questions  which  regarded  his  own  advantage.  As 
his  own  advantage  was  often  identical  with  that  of 
his  kingdom,  he  was  considered  a  patriotic  monarch  ; 
but  when  his  own  advantage  clashed  with  that  of  his 
kingdom,  the  latter  went  to  the  wall,  as  in  loyalty  a 
kingdom  is  bound  to  do.  He  had  a  sincere  belief 
in  his  own  utility  to  the  country :  he  was  perfectly 
honest  in  his  conviction  that  his  grip  held  it 
together,  that  he  was  the  keystone  of  its  arch,  the 
mortar  of  its  bastions.  He  took  himself  very 
seriously.  He  believed  in  himself,  which  is  the 
surest  mode  of  making  others  believe  in  you.  Born 
in  a  private  station,  he  would  have  made  an  admi- 
rable artillery  or  infantry  officer,  or,  perhaps,  a  still 
better  merchant  or  stockbroker  ;  that  he  impressed 
many  persons  as  being  a  potential  Caesar  was  due 
entirely  to  his  own  belief  in  his  Caesarism.  Called 
to  be  the  constitutional  sovereign  of  a  liberty-loving 
and  republican  nation,  he  had  made  himself  an  auto- 
crat and  the  nation  a  servant.  The  alteration  had 
been  gradual,  and  not  violent,  for  he  was  a  man  who 
could  control  his  desires  in  his  own  interests.  This 
power  of  self-restraint  was  the  conspicuous  quality 
of  his  race. 

Nothing,  now,  would  have  given  him  greater 
pleasure  than  to  have  had  his  son  put  under  arrest 
immediately  on  his  return  from  the  Field  of  Ares  ; 
nothing  would  have  been  more  just  or  correct  as  he 


34  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

viewed  justice  and  correction.  But  lie  hesitated  to 
carry  out  his  views :  he  knew  that  his  son  was 
popular,  and  that  the  populace  of  Helios  might  rise 
in  his  defence. 

So  far  as  the  King  had  nerves  to  suffer  from,  he 
was  nervous  during  any  visit  of  the  War-lord  of  the 
Guthones.  He  was  constantly  apprehensive  of  some- 
thing which  might  happen  to  disgrace  his  army  or 
his  police  in  his  guest's  sight.  This  action  of  his 
Second  son  was  such  a  heinous  breach  of  military 
etiquette  as  it  would  have  been  impossible  ever  to  have 
seen  on  the  sandy  plains  where  the  hosts  of  Julius 
manoeuvred.  It  was  natural  that  all  the  sullen,  savage 
rage  of  which  his  reserved  temper  was  capable, 
growled  within  him  like  a  muzzled  mastiff's.  If  he 
had  followed  his  impulses,  and  his  sense  of  duty, 
Elim  would  have  had  short  shrift. 

To  him  the  action  of  Othyris  was  the  most 
contemptible  melodrama,  as  well  as  the  most  intol- 
erable breach  of  discipline.  That  break  of  a  few 
minutes  in  the  march  past,  of  which  Elim  thought  so 
lightly,  was  to  him  a  direct  offence  against  military 
etiquette  and  law.  No  punishment  would  have 
seemed  to  him  too  severe  for  it,  viewed  from  a 
military  standpoint.  But  that  the  abominable  act 
had  pleased  the  people  he  was  aware  ;  the  rapturous 
cheering  with  which  his  son  had  been  greeted  in  the 
streets  had  told  him  that ;  and  he  doubted  whether 
public  opinion,  either  in  the  country  or  outside  it, 
would  go  with  him  in  heavy  chastisement  of  an  in- 
fraction of  discipline  which  had  as  its  excuse  the  senti- 
mental plea  of  humanity. 

The  King  was  a  strong  man  and  in  nothing 
stronger  than  in  his  capability  of  taking  into  account 


in  HLL1AN  IJriUb  35 

the  weight  in  public  opinion  of  feelings  which  he 
himself  despised  as  absurd  and  hysterical  vapours. 

With  him,  in  this  distressing  hour,  were  the 
Commander-in-Chief  of  the  Army,  the  War  Min- 
ister, and  the  Prefect  of  the  Palace. 

The  theories  and  the  temper  of  the  first  of 
these  officials,  General  Lipsahl,  made  him  abhor 
such  an  action  as  that  of  Othyris  on  the  Field  of 
Ares.  It  was  in  his  sight  a  treason  to  the  flag,  to 
the  King,  to  the  dignity  of  the  military  calling. 
Who  could  excuse  it  ?  No  one  who  had  any  sense 
of  duty.  At  the  same  time,  although  the  mind  of 
Lipsahl  was  like  an  armoured  waggon,  closed  by 
iron  shutters  to  projectiles  as  to  daylight,  yet  Kanta- 
kuzene,  the  Prime  Minister,  had  seen  him  for  ten 
minutes,  secretly,  and  had  said  to  him  : 

'  For  God's  sake,  remember  this  thing  is  popular ; 
restrain  the  King  from  public  blame  of  it.' 

This  was  the  evil  which  ensued  from  Helianthus 
being  nominally  at  least  a  constitutional  State ; 
monarch  and  ministers  had  still  sometimes  to  consider 
popular  feeling. 

The  ideal  of  Lipsahl  was  the  adjacent  little 
kingdom  of  Barusia,  where  the  guards  arrested  a 
poodle  for  wearing  national,  i.e.  revolutionary, 
colours ;  or  the  empire  of  the  Septentriones,  where 
one  soldier's  life  was  esteemed  worth  the  lives  of 
one  hundred  civilians.  But  he  had  the  misfortune 
to  be  in  command  of  the  army  in  a  country  in 
which  certain  anti-military  fictions  were  still  neces- 
sarily maintained.  They  were  merely  fictions ;  yet 
he,  like  his  royal  master,  was  obliged  to  pretend 
to  consider  them  realities,  and,  as  such,  to  be  in- 
fluenced by  them  !  He  considered  that  the  Duke 


36  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

of  Othyris  deserved  punishment  without  bias  or 
mercy,  but  he  knew  that  such  punishment  would 
arouse  dangerous  resentment  in  the  city  and  in 
many  parts  of  the  country.  He  felt  also  that  the 
national  mind  was  so  feeble  and  so  prejudiced  that 
if  an  act  were  humane  it  was  considered  laudable. 
No  government  (as  no  war)  could  be  conducted 
on  humane  principles;  but  the  public  everywhere, 
though  in  war  it  realises  this  great  truth,  in  peace 
ignores  it,  even  considers  it  horrible. 

lonides  Aracoeli,  the  War  Minister,  a  civilian  who 
knew  as  much  of  war  as  a  child  of  therapeutics,  and 
whose  mind  always  trotted  humbly  after  the  superior 
minds  of  his  sovereign  and  of  Lipsahl,  and  indeed 
only  existed  to  be  their  echo  in  the  Chamber  and 
their  instrument  at  the  War  Office,  was  perfectly 
ready  to  do  or  to  say  whatever  he  might  be  told  to 
do  or  say.  But  in  his  innermost  soul  he  hoped 
that  no  severity  would  be  used.  For  the  civilian 
mind,  however  indoctrinated  by  a  warlike  Press, 
remains  feminine,  or  at  least  appears  feminine  to  the 
military  mind,  which  considers  itself  alone  truly 
masculine ;  and  the  feminine  mind  is  always  captivated 
by  the  sensational  charm  of  such  an  altruistic  action 
as  this  folly  on  the  Field  of  Ares. 

There  only  remained  the  Prefect  of  the  Palace, 
Baron  Zelia,  the  King's  favourite  and  confidant,  if 
the  monarch  could  be  supposed  to  admit  those 
crutches  of  the  feeble,  either  favourites  or  confidants, 
into  his  robust  and  all-sufficing  existence.  Baron 
Zelia  ventured  to  say  openly  in  a  few  well-chosen 
and  delicate  words  that  the  act  on  the  Field  of  Ares 
had  pleased  the  people  of  Helios;  that  no  doubt  it 
merited  censure  in  many  ways,  but  that  the  people 


in  HELIANTHUS  37 

approved  of  it,  and  the  approval  of  the  people  should 
not  be  completely  disregarded. 

Why,  the  King  wondered,  was  what  was  idiotic 
always  popular  ?  Who  ever  heard  of  a  sound  and 
sensible  action  being  so  ?  What  was  hysterical,  high- 
flown,  hyperbolic,  always  captivated  the  public  fancy. 
Why  was  his  second  son  popular  ?  Because  he  was  a 
visionary  and  a  fool.  Zelia  affirmed  that  the  absurd 
and  offensive  action  of  his  second  son  had  been  warmly 
admired  and  applauded  by  the  people ;  there  was  no 
doubt  about  that ;  and  though  the  people  were  no 
more  in  his  own  sight  than  a  herd  of  swine,  he  knew 
that  if  the  swine  took  to  running  amuck  they  might 
carry  with  them  him  and  his  over  the  precipice.  The 
precipice  was  always  there,  dark,  deep,  unpleasant, 
an  ever-yawning  tomb ;  dynasties  older,  safer, 
stronger  than  his,  had  been  hurled  into  such  a  pit 
before  then. 

In  the  King's  character  there  was  one  supremely 
useful  trait :  it  was  the  power  he  possessed  of 
keeping  back  his  anger  and  his  appetites  in  subjection 
to  his  interests.  Whoever  possesses  that  power  is 
sure,  whether  in  private  or  in  public  life,  of  a  con- 
siderable measure  of  individual  success.  The  King 
had  not  a  great  character  or  great  intelligence,  but 
what  he  had  of  either  he  kept  well  in  hand  ;  even 
his  instincts  of  brutality  and  authority  he  could 
subordinate  to  the  demands  of  his  interests. 

The  Emperor  of  the  Guthones,  his  sister's 
son,  was  the  one  person  for  whom  the  King 
entertained  a  sincere  envy  and  admiration.  Julius 
had  a  manner  of  telling  his  army  that  he  expected 
it  to  massacre  its  fellow-countrymen,  whenever 
desired,  which  rivalled  the  finest  times  of  mediaeval 


38  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

despotism.  He  had  a  felicitous  familiarity  in  his 
relations  with  the  Deity,  coupled  with  a  reverential 
admiration  of  himself  and  of  his  own  acts,  his  own 
speeches,  his  own  talents  and  policies,  which  John  of 
Gunderode  admired  respectfully,  though  the  stolid 
common-sense  of  his  own  temper  prevented  him  from 
equalling  them.  To  rise  to  those  supreme  heights 
of  self-adoration  it  is  needful  to  have  more  than  one 
grain  de  folie  in  one's  moral  and  mental  composition, 
and  the  King  had  no  grains  de  folie  in  his  composi- 
tion ;  he  was  entirely  practical  and  sensible. 

Soldiers,  police,  and  the  Deity  were  the  three  forces 
on  which  both  sovereigns  relied  to  keep  themselves 
in  power,  and  their  peoples  quiet ;  but  John  of  Gun- 
derode felt  that  his  nephew  was  the  finer  artist  of 
the  two  in  his  ability  to  take  so  very  seriously  the  last 
of  the  trio. 

King  John  certainly  believed  in  a  Providence  in 
that  vague  manner  in  which  most  men  of  the  world 
believe  in  that  which  they  do  not  take  the  trouble  to 
think  about,  but  which  is  considered  a  generally 
received  and  wholly  respectable  tradition,  of  con- 
siderable utility  at  certain  moments.  But  to  the 
Emperor  of  the  Guthones  his  God  was  a  continual 
presence,  like  that,  in  a  banking  or  mercantile  house  of 
business,  of  the  venerable  senior  partner  who  leaves 
every  initiative  to  the  junior  partner,  but  is  always  to 
be  relied  on  for  a  signature  at  the  necessary  moment, 
and  is  eminently  precious  as  a  quotable  authority. 

The  two  views  were  as  dissimilar  as  are  those  of 
a  suspicious  man  and  of  a  confident  child.  Yet  at 
the  back  of  each  of  their  minds  there  was  one 
common  thought.  The  Deity  to  each  of  them  was 
of  great  use  in  impressing  the  masses  and  upholding 


in  HELIANTHUS  39 

the  crown  ;  and  if  either  of  them  should  go  to  war, 
the  Divine  name  would  be  held  in  front  of  them  like 
a  shield,  and  make  all  carnage  and  looting,  and 
burning  and  torturing,  which  the  wars  might  involve, 
seem  necessary,  justifiable,  and  even  benevolent 
measures,  to  which  no  one  could  be  opposed  except 
*  cranks.' 

The  family  of  Julius,  the  LillienstaufFen,  had 
been  in  their  origin,  like  the  Gunderode,  lords  of 
a  small  feudal  fief,  high  set  on  stony  hills  above 
morass  and  plain,  whence  they  had  descended  to 
kidnap  travellers  and  pilgrims,  and  wreck  convoys 
and  mule-trains.  Like  the  Gunderode,  they  had 
progressed  from  one  rank  to  another,  and  turned  all 
their  neighbours'  misfortunes  to  their  own  account, 
until  they  had  become  first  margraves,  then  princes, 
then  kings,  then  emperors,  distancing  the  Gunde- 
rode, and  finally  ruling  over  an  immense  and  powerful 
conglomeration  of  States  which  regarded  the  head 
of  the  House  as  their  suzerain,  or,  as  Julius  preferred 
to  phrase  it,  '  Supreme  Envoy  of  God.' 

f  I  and  God,'  said  Julius ;  King  John  was  con- 
tented only  to  say  *  I.'  In  his  shrewd  and  practical 
mind  he  had  an  impression  that  the  addition  weakened 
the  royal  or  imperial  claim  to  infallibility.  In  his 
own  discourses  he  always  kept  the  Deity  far  away  in 
the  background,  as  a  vague  and  indefinite  potentiality 
completely  eclipsed  by  its  vice-regents,  the  monarchs. 
But  he  nevertheless  admired  the  manner  in  which 
Julius  flourished  his  God  in  the  face  of  Christian 
and  Paynim,  whilst  instructing  his  soldiers  that  their 
most  sacred  duty  would  be  to  swill  the  conduits  of 
the  capital  with  the  national  blood,  if  he,  Julius, 
should  ever  order  them  so  to  do. 


40  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

Like  all  truly  great  men  Julius  did  not  allow  his 
partnership  with  Providence  to  prevent  his  devoting 
the  most  minute  attention  to  details,  such  as  the 
length  of  his  grenadiers'  hair,  the  device  on  his 
fusiliers'  buttons,  the  colour  of  a  stripe,  the  quality 
of  a  stuff,  or  the  changes  in  the  cut  of  a  tunic.  He 
would  get  up  before  dark  to  sketch  a  design  for 
a  sleeve-cuff;  and  would  consign  a  guardsman  to 
arrest  who  had  a  speck  on  his  pipe-clay.  Thus  it 
was  with  a  gaze  terrible  as  Medusa's,  and  searching 
as  a  microscopic  lens,  that  he  had  that  day  sat  on  his 
war-horse  and  inspected  his  uncle's  forces. 

His  tongue  was  glib  in  compliment  and  con- 
gratulation, but  his  hawk's  eyes  were  merciless  in  the 
detection  of  defects  in  that  military  machine  which 
in  his  estimation  only  existed  to  be  at  once  the  play- 
thing and  the  thunderbolt  of  monarchs. 

King  John  knew  that  his  own  machine  was  far 
from  faultless,  despite  the  pains  with  which  he  had 
consecrated  his  life  to  its  dressage  and  dominance. 
The  people  of  Helianthus  were  not  a  race  to  give 
full  satisfaction  to  a  martinet;  they  could  not  be 
made  perfectly  rigid,  passive,  accurate  puppets  of 
iron  and  clockwork.  Their  blood  was  hot,  their 
tempers  were  unsuited  to  compulsion ;  their  limbs 
were  graceful  often,  but  seldom  strong ;  their  natural 
movements  were  careless,  easy,  indolent ;  they  drank 
when  they  were  thirsty,  unbuttoned  their  jackets 
when  they  were  hot,  fell  out  of  line  when  anything 
tempted  them  on  the  march  ;  the  best  amongst  them 
never  looked  f  smart '  in  the  martinet's  sense  of  the 
word. 

{ It  is  not  an  army ;  it  is  a  rabble  in  uniform,' 
thought  Julius,  as  he  sat  on  his  charger  beside  the 


in  HELIANTHUS  41 

flagstaff.  *  If  I  threw  a  few  thousand  of  my  ironsides 
against  it,  they  would  double  it  up  like  a  pancake  ! ' 

He  had  seen  it  often,  and  he  had  always  found  it 
the  same,  and  John  of  Gunderode  guessed  the  un- 
spoken thought. 

The  King  had  done  his  best :  he  had  spared  no 
brutality,  he  had  shown  no  clemency,  he  had  punished 
with  unexampled  severity  every  lightest  breach  of 
discipline  ;  he  had  cashiered  generals  for  the  smallest 
indulgence  and  the  most  trivial  insubordination  ;  he 
had  confirmed  the  death-sentences  of  courts-martial, 
and  had  spurned  the  wretched  mothers  and  wives 
who  knelt  at  his  feet  to  implore  mercy  for  the 
condemned ;  he  had  never  yielded  for  an  instant  to 
any  weakness,  and  had  never  spared  either  himself 
or  others  in  his  effort  to  crush  all  manhood  out  of 
three  hundred  thousand  men.  Most  of  his  rank 
and  file  were  peasants,  youngsters  who  had  been 
poorly  fed  from  their  cradles  ;  they  were  slight  of 
muscle,  of  build,  of  stamina ;  they  bore  ill  the 
weight  of  their  accoutrements,  the  constraint  of 
their  uniforms,  the  confinement  of  their  barracks  ; 
they  were  children  of  the  valleys  and  the  mountains, 
used  to  run  with  bare  feet  through  the  thyme  and 
the  wild  sage,  and  pipe  on  their  cut  reeds,  as  their 
forefathers  had  done  in  the  days  when  Pan  was  god 
of  the  woodland  world.  As  modern  eyes  view 
soldiers,  these  conscripts,  even  after  three  years 
under  arms,  matched  ill  with  the  muscular,  bearded, 
Herculean  human  engines  of  war,  fed  on  strong  beer 
and  fat  meat,  who  were  commanded  by  the  Emperor 
of  the  Guthones. 

Julius,  in  speech  most  flattering,  yet  always  made 
King  John  feel  that  his  artillery  was  six  months 


42  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

behind  the  last  invention  in  ordnance,  that  his  big- 
gest foot-guards  were  short  of  stature,  that  his  smart- 
est regiments  straggled  a  little  in  their  march  past ; 
that,  when  his  Grenadiers  tramped  by  in  line,  some 
man's  tip  of  nose,  or  tip  of  boot,  was  sure  to  be  an 
inch  in  advance  of  the  rest.  Some  cavalry  horse 
unlike  his  fellows  in  shape  or  size  or  colour  or  breed, 
some  gap  in  the  order  of  battery  following  battery, 
some  young  trooper  visibly  uneasy  and  awkward  in 
his  saddle,  some  driver  letting  his  team  buck  or  his 
wheels  lock  —  some  error,  offence,  or  imperfection, 
there  always  was. 

The  keen  gaze  of  his  visitor  noted,  he  knew,  every 
sign  of  such  irregularity ;  trifles  in  the  sight  of  an 
ignorant  civilian,  but  unpardonable  offences  in  the 
sight  of  a  military  monarch.  In  such  hours  John  of 
Gunderode  suffered  acutely.  Therefore,  that  a  break 
in  the  march  past  should  have  occurred  in  the  pres- 
ence of  Julius,  was  an  unendurable  humiliation  to 
him  in  his  own  eyes. 

The  Guthones  were  a  northerly  people  ;  they  were 
a  beer-filled  people  ;  they  were  a  people  who  had  for 
many  generations  always  been  drilled  from  their 
cradles ;  their  land  had  for  many  centuries  been  cut 
up  into  tiny  principalities,  but  each  of  these  little 
pieces  had  been  ruled  with  a  rod  of  iron ;  they  were 
used  to  live  with  their  feet  in  the  stocks  and  their 
necks  in  steel  collars.  They  submitted  to  be  the 
living  pegs  of  a  perpetual  game  of  krief spiel  without 
protest,  and  they  scarcely  grumbled  when  their 
masters  broke  their  ribs  to  teach  them  to  stand 
straight.  These  are  of  course  the  model  subjects  of 
a  State,  the  ideal  plebs,  the  true  chair  a  canon  ;  but 
they  do  not  exist  everywhere. 


in  HELIANTHUS  43 

The  King,  who  had  a  great  deal  of  Guthonic 
blood  in  him,  spent  his  life  in  the  effort  to  make  the 
Helianthines  resemble  the  Guthones.  But  he  might 
as  well  have  tried  to  make  a  greyhound  a  bulldog. 
The  fair  shores  of  Helianthus  had  been  desired, 
attacked,  ravaged,  seized,  laid  desolate,  scores  of 
times  ever  since  the  ponderous  galleys  of  Asiatic  foes 
had  first  been  driven  through  the  waters  of  the  Mare 
Magnum  by  slaves  chained  to  the  oars.  The  King 
knew  that  they  would  be  so  desired,  so  attacked, 
again  and  again,  in  the  centuries  to  come,  and  that  by 
no  one  else  were  they  so  likely  to  be  desired  and 
attacked  as  by  this  young  man,  his  well-beloved 
nephew,  who  kissed  him  on  both  cheeks,  and,  profit- 
ing by  an  affectionate  intimacy,  studied  and  espied 
every  thin  armour  plate  in  his  navy,  every  ill- 
buttoned  tunic  in  his  army. 

There  was  no  security  in  the  future.  What  the 
world  calls  peace  is  but  a  suspension  of  hostilities,  a 
jealous  watching  of  wild  beasts.  King  John  knew, 
as  his  nephew  knew,  that  the  army  of  Helianthus 
would  not  be  able  to  stand  against  an  invasion  of  the 
Guthones  ;  that,  if  unsupported,  its  young  battalions, 
ill-fed  and  with  no  naturally  martial  instincts,  would 
immediately,  however  commanded  or  however  incited, 
give  way  before  the  brawny  and  beer-filled  ironsides 
of  Julius.  It  was  one  of  those  anxieties  of  which  no 
man  can  speak,  which  put  into  words  would  seem  to 
disgrace  the  speaker.  But  it  was  in  the  King's  mind 
at  all  times.  Who  could  be  sure  that  a  turn  in  the 
wheel  of  fortune  might  not  give  to  Julius  the  excuse, 
the  opportunity,  the  pretext  which  he  craved  ? 

For  the  King  did  not  believe  as  solidly  as  he 
would  have  wished  to  do  in  the  future  independence 


44  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

of  Helianthus.  The  national  unity  of  the  Helian- 
thines  was  more  a  phrase  than  a  fact.  A  running 
stream  between  two  villages,  a  crest  of  hills  between 
two  communes,  was  enough  to  make  each  the  enemy 
of  the  other  in  a  blood-feud  lasting  for  centuries. 
At  the  first  scream  of  hostile  shells  it  was  probable 
that  the  national  solidarity,  which  existed  chiefly  on 
paper  and  in  oratory,  would  fall  in  pieces  like  an  un- 
bound faggot.  King  John  felt  that  if  Julius  himself 
did  not  live  to  carry  out  his  desire,  some  scion  of  his 
would  sooner  or  later  send  his  ironclads  into  the 
Mare  Magnum  and  his  armies  over  the  mountains  of 
Rhaetia,  and  the  classic  land  would  become  a  mere 
southern  portion  of  the  Guthonic  realm.  True, 
socialism  in  an  acute  form  mined  the  Guthonic  empire, 
but  its  militarism  was  stronger;  the  vanity  and  strength 
of  the  Guthonic  people  would  always,  or  at  least  for  a 
long  time  to  come,  be  unable  to  resist  the  national  in- 
stinct towards  war  and  conquest,  and  the  geographical 
position  of  Helianthus  offered  it  as  the  first  victim. 

'  Our  War-lord  exacts  no  tribute  as  yet.  Let  us 
be  grateful  ! '  thought  Othyris,  who  was  chafed  and 
irritated  in  an  unspeakable  degree  by  those  annual 
visits,  ostensibly  of  friendship  and  family  sentiment, 
in  reality  of  inspection  and  criticism.  He  always 
saw,  in  imagination,  his  cousin  riding  on  a  snow- 
white  charger  down  the  central  street  of  Helios  at 
the  head  of  victorious  troops. 

But  that  time  had  not  then  arrived. 

The  Emperor  Julius  stood  by  one  of  the  windows 
of  the  apartments  allotted  to  him  in  the  Soleia,  and 
smoked,  and  gazed  over  the  sea,  and  felt  with  im- 
patience that  the  time  was  not  even  near. 

His  balconies  overhung  the  marble  terraces  and 


in  HELIANTHUS  45 

stairs  facing  the  western  sea ;  beneath  them  was  the 
safe  and  sheltered  harbour  in  which  his  yacht  was 
anchored  and  pleasure-boats  awaited  his  choice. 
The  air  was  odorous  with  the  scent  of  orange  and 
lemon  flowers,  and  of  the  great  white  cups  of  mag- 
nolias; deep-toned  bells  were  chiming;  rose-coloured 
clouds  floated  in  the  sky;  the  tread  of  a  sentinel 
pacing  the  pavement  beneath  was  the  only  discordant 
sound,  but  to  him  it  had  no  discord  —  it  was  the 
welcome  sound  which  accompanied  his  whole  life, 
sleeping  or  waking,  the  assurance  that  his  guardian 
angel  in  uniform  was  watching  over  him,  the  armed 
shape  that  his  heavenly  Father's  protection  of  him 
assumed.  He  saw  no  absurdity  in  this ;  it  was  to 
him  quite  natural ;  he  had  the  same  belief  in  his 
especial  favour  by  Heaven  as  Mahomet  had  ;  he  did 
not  reason,  he  believed;  in  himself  first,  and  then  in 
the  Deity  as  the  creator  and  defender  of  himself. 

But  Heaven,  favourable  to  him  in  so  much,  denied 
him  the  Mare  Magnum. 

In  his  few  minutes  of  solitary  reflection  he  looked 
over  those  beautiful  waters,  violet  in  some  lights, 
azure  in  others,  a  malachite  green  or  a  dusky  pea- 
cock-purple, farther  away.  Why  did  Providence  deny 
him  that  sea  ?  What  a  harbour  it  would  be  for  his 
battleships  !  What  an  open  portal  to  the  conquest 
of  Asia  and  of  Africa !  What  an  outlet  to  his 
legions  and  to  the  commerce  of  his  empire ! 

For  there  is  always  commerce  in  the  dreams  and 
ambitions  of  the  modern  monarch.  The  Caesar  of 
the  twentieth  century,  even  in  his  most  romantic 
visions,  always  wears  the  grocer's  apron,  holds  the 
draper's  rule,  loads  the  cattle-ship  and  the  coal-truck  ; 
his  flag  flies  from  a  grain-elevator,  his  trumpet  sounds 


46  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

from  a  co-operative  store ;  be  he  as  martial  as  he 
may,  he  cannot  escape  the  mercantile  taint  of  his 
time. 

On  each  of  his  annual  or  bi-annual  visits,  which 
Elim  called  the  t  inspections  of  the  War-lord,'  Julius 
envied  the  possession  of  the  Mare  Magnum  with  all 
the  keenness  of  his  appetite  and  ambitions  ;  and  no 
year  brought  him  nearer  its  conquest.  It  would  not 
have  been  difficult  for  him  to  take  it ;  to  sweep  down 
with  the  molten  iron  of  his  mobilised  forces  over  the 
mountains  on  the  north,  whilst  his  fleet  steamed  into 
the  Helianthine  waters  and  shut  the  sea  gates  on 
Helios.  He  would  have  had  no  fear  of  the  result 
if — if  Europe  could  have  been  trusted  to  remain 
neutral.  But  he  could  not  trust  Europe  so  far. 
Nay,  he  was  certain  that  she  would  stop  him  in  the 
defiles  of  the  northern  Alps,  as  a  great  Power  had 
once  been  stopped  within  reach  of  Stamboul.  Europe 
was  not  ripe  for  a  single  dominant  master.  She  had 
no  individual  love  for  the  King  of  Helianthus,  but 
he  was  a  stop-gap,  a  buffer,  a  safety-valve.  She  had 
no  desire  for  a  single  conquering  hero,  for  a  second 
parterre  des  rois  disarmed  and  made  ridiculous  at  a 
second  Tilsit.  The  condition  of  the  nations  is  bad ; 
but  a  single  autocrat,  even  such  a  vice-regent  of 
Christ  as  Julius  Imperator,  would  be,  Europe  thinks, 
infinitely  worse. 

So,  impotent  to  realise  his  vast  ambitions,  yet 
hovering  over  them  as  the  hawk  over  the  pigeon's 
cote,  Julius  came  every  year  or  two  to  visit  his  rela- 
tive and  ally,  and  to  look  with  longing  eyes  and  futile 
wishes  over  the  luminous  waters  whence,  ever  since 
the  days  of  Homer  and  of  Hesiod,  many  a  fleet  of 
fable  and  of  history  has  sailed  away  into  the  golden 


in  HELIANTHUS  47 

glory  of  the  setting  sun,  or  issued  with  swelling 
canvas  from  out  the  rosy  dusk  of  dawn.  Who  could 
say  that  some  time  might  not  come  when  Europe, 
exhausted,  over-burdened,  or  grown  indifferent,  might 
not  let  the  hawk  loosen  the  hasp  of  the  pigeon-cote 
with  his  beak? 

It  is  said  that  a  monarch,  being  asked  who  he 
would  be,  if  he  could  choose,  replied:  'If  I  were  not 
myself,  I  would  be  my  nephew  Julius.'  But  Julius 
was  not  greatly  to  be  envied ;  the  torment  of  an 
insatiable  and  unrealisable  ambition  was  like  a  per- 
petual fire  in  his  blood  ;  he  wanted  worlds  to  conquer; 
he  wanted  the  chariot  of  the  sun  to  take  him  to  the 
capture  of  new  solar  systems. 

When  the  earth  is  mapped  out  on  a  papier-mache 
globe  for  the  use  of  schools,  and  travelling  tickets 
to  go  round  it  are  things  of  daily  life,  it  has  ceased 
to  be  a  sphere  sufficient  for  great  ambitions.  A  great 
ambition  requires  the  immeasurable,  requires  a 
vague  distance  of  golden  vapour  which  can  give  it  a 
horizon,  and  allure  it  with  a  mirage.  The  earth  was 
too  small  a  sphere  for  Julius,  and,  unwisely,  he  had 
hampered  himself  in  the  use  of  such  space  and  oppor- 
tunity as  it  offered,  by  having  called  himself  publicly 
and  often  an  apostle  of  peace.  He  had  a  fine  engine 
of  war  at  his  elbow,  but  he  had  told  mankind  that  he 
loved  them  too  well  to  use  it,  which  was  a  superfluous 
and  paralysing  assertion. 

True,  it  is  possible  to  eat  your  own  words,  if  you 
have  a  good  digestion  and  good  teeth ;  but  it  is 
better  not  to  have  any  words  which  require  eating. 
It  is  better  not  to  compare  yourself  with  Christ,  if 
you  are  desirous  of  behaving  like  Attila. 

Julius  turned  from  the  balcony  with  an  impatient 


48  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

sigh,  and  flung  his  cigar  into  the  magnolia  grove 
which  faced  it ;  his  attendants  hastened  to  make  his 
evening  toilette,  and  array  him  in  the  glittering 
uniform  of  that  Helianthine  regiment  of  Cuirassiers 
of  which  he  was  the  Honorary  Colonel. 

Helianthus  was  not  for  him.  Not  yet,  at  least ; 
not  yet,  he  thought,  as  the  Helianthine  Orders  were 
fastened  on  his  breast.  All  things  come  to  those 
who  know  how  to  wait,  says  the  proverb.  Alas,  no  ! 
not  all  things.  Only  one  thing  is  certain,  —  death. 
Of  that  no  one  will  cheat  us,  whether  we  be 
emperors  or  beggars ;  and  the  omnipotent  Julius 
sighed. 

A  little  later, after  dinner  that  evening,  he  solved  the 
problem  of  the  treatment  due  to  the  offender  on  the 
Field  of  Ares.  In  a  quarter  of  an  hour's  chat  with  his 
uncle  in  the  smoking-room,  with  that  tact  and  grace 
which  characterised  him  when  he  chose  to  call  them 
to  his  aid,  he  entreated  as  a  favour  to  himself  that 
nothing  should  be  said  or  done  regarding  his  cousin's 
breach  of  discipline. 

'  One  must  not  blame  an  error  of  the  heart,'  he 
said ;  and  he  combined  with  true  diplomatic  skill  the 
pleasure  of  interceding  for  a  man  to  whom  such 
intercession  would  be  very  bitter,  and  of  conveying  in 
honeyed  phrase  his  sense  that  the  classic  Helianthus 
had  many  a  lesson  still  to  learn  from  the  juvenile 
empire  of  the  Guthones.  In  the  art  of  presenting  a 
rose  for  the  buttonhole  with  a  pin  carefully  adjusted 
to  prick  the  skin  under  the  buttonhole,  Julius  of 
LillienstaufFen  had  no  superior.  His  rose  was  always 
sweet ;  his  pin  was  always  sharp. 

Of  course  at  his  request  the  eccentric  act  was  not 
chastised  as  it  should  have  been ;  no  request  of  such 


HI  JrlllLl/liN  ltt  US  49 

a  guest  could  be  refused.  It  was  ill-judged  amia- 
bility in  the  guest,  thought  the  King  and  his  generals. 
But  Elim  knew  that  it  was  not  amiability  at  all,  but 
some  motive  exceedingly  different. 

To  him,  at  all  times,  these  visits  of  his  cousin 
were  a  painful,  a  hated,  ordeal.  He  smarted  under 
the  concealed  patronage,  the  too  extreme  praise,  the 
highly  coloured  asseverations  of  family  affection, 
the  cruelly  courteous  expressions  of  admiration  of  an 
army  in  which  deficiency  was  plainly  more  visible  than 
excellence  and  perfection  lagged  hopelessly  behind. 

'  You  cannot  now  deny  the  tact  and  the  mag- 
nanimity of  the  Emperor,'  said  theCrown  Prince  to  his 
wife,  who  did  not  reply.  She  knew  that  the  tact  was 
always  there,  unless  temper  got  the  better  of  it;  the 
magnanimity  she  did  not  see,  but  she  dared  not  say  so. 
To  lay  another  under  an  obligation  is  sometimes  a 
very  sweet  and  subtle  form  of  cruelty.  Othyris 
would  have  preferred  two  years  in  a  fortress,  or  any 
kind  of  military  degradation,  to  being  under  an 
obligation  to  his  imperial  cousin.  But  no  choice  was 
given  him;  and  the  King  took  care  that  the  pill  should 
be  made  as  bitter  as  it  could  be  by  the  aloes  and 
assafcetida  of  his  own  pharmacopoeia.  Julius,  how- 
ever, enjoyed  a  favour  in  the  sight  of  the  people  of 
Helios  which  he  had  never  attained  before ;  and  the 
public  having  become  aware  that  he  had  interceded 
to  avert  punishment  from  their  favourite,  cheered 
him  with  sincerity  and  enthusiasm  for  the  first  time 
as  he  drove  to  the  station. 

'  I  believe  they  would  receive  me  with  cordiality 
if  I  conquered  them,'  he  thought,  as  the  same  vision 
which  had  floated  before  the  mind  of  Elim,  of  himself, 
Julius  Imperator,  on  a  white  charger,  riding  through 


50  HELIANTHUS  CHAP,  in 

the  city  of  Helios  at  the  head  of  his  victorious  army, 
beguiled  his  imagination  as  his  train  bore  him  to  the 
north-west,  homeward  to  his  empire  in  time  to  hold 
a  review  of  troops  on  the  morrow  on  the  sandy  plains 
of  his  military  capital,  and  preach  a  sermon  in  the 
afternoon  in  his  lay  capital,  in  a  newly-built  cathedral : 
a  sermon  of  which  the  text  was,  f  Blessed  are  the 
peace-makers,  for  of  them  is  the  kingdom  of 
heaven.' 

'  He  is  very  clever,  our  Julius,'  thought  the  old 
Emperor  Gregory,  ruler  of  the  Septentriones,  when 
he  read  the  telegraphed  heads  of  that  sermon.  *  He 
would  be  cleverer  still,  if  he  could  only  hold  his 
tongue ! ' 

But  that  was  the  one  thing  which  Julius  could  not 
do.  Nature  had  denied  him  the  power  of  silence,  or 
the  appreciation  of  the  truth  that  if  speech  is  silver, 
silence  is  gold. 

Julius,  who  was  one  of  the  multitude  of  the  revered 
Gregory's  great-grandchildren,  amused  that  shrewd 
nonagenarian  infinitely..  Gregory  too  had  been  a 
Zeus,  but  Gregory  had  taken  his  own  supreme 
divinity  more  philosophically  and  less  pompously. 
Gregory  had  always  been  before  everything  else  a 
man  of  the  world  ;  and  a  man  of  the  world  never 
overloads  colour,  or  enforces  emphasis. 

When  Othyris  also  read  the  prhis  of  that  sermon 
in  the  newspapers  he  could  willingly  have  taken  his 
imperial  cousin  by  the  throat ;  there  are  services 
which  make  the  sensitive  smart  more  painfully  than 
any  outrage,  and  every  syllable  of  that  oration  seemed 
to  him  to  emphasise  the  pardon  asked  for  by  Julius 
for  the  offence  on  the  Field  of  Ares. 


CHAPTER   IV 

HELIANTHUS  was  a  country  with  a  glorious  past 
history,  and  a  present  which  did  not  satisfy  those 
who  remembered  its  past.  It  was  assured  by  its 
rulers  that  it  was  free  as  air ;  the  modern  synonym 
for  freedom  is  taxation,  and  of  this  form  of  liberty  it 
certainly  enjoyed  its  full  share ;  of  other  forms  it  did 
not  see  much.  Everything  was  taxed  in  it,  from 
the  owls'  nests  on  the  roofs  of  the  cabins  to  the 
unhappy  asses  which  drew  the  wooden  ploughs.  In 
return,  it  received  a  great  many  compliments  from 
foreign  nations,  and  various  visits  from  foreign 
sovereigns  ;  possessed  a  nominally  free  Press,  of 
which  the  freedom  was  duly  tempered  by  fines  and 
imprisonment ;  and  enjoyed  the  enrolment  of  a  vast 
rabble  of  its  own  sons,  dressed  up  in  clumsy  uniforms  ; 
huge  ships  of  copper,  or  steel,  or  aluminium,  lying  at 
anchor  in  its  beautiful  harbours  ;  crowds  of  spies  and 
gendarmes  in  every  one  of  its  towns  ;  armed  men  at 
all  its  gates  to  see  that  no  bunch  of  grass,  or  half- 
fledged  pullet,  passed  them  without  paying  its  dues  ; 
and  innumerable  prisons,  fortresses  in  exterior  and 
hells  within,  where  strength  and  energy  and  vigour 
rotted  into  gibbering  idiotcy,  and  young  men  grew 
aged  in  a  year. 

Helianthus  had  three  generations  earlier  dreamed  a 

51 


52  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

fair  and  glittering  dream  of  liberty,  and  had  armed  like 
a  second  Joan  of  Arc  ;  but  like  Joan  the  fetters  had 
been  put  on  her  limbs,  and  the  smoke  of  the  pyre 
had  stifled  her  breath.  Joan  died;  Helianthus  did 
not  die  —  she  accepted  the  loss  of  her  dream. 

The  land  is  sadly  changed  in  its  physical  and 
architectural  features  ;  the  destruction  of  its  forests, 
the  drying  up  of  its  rivers,  the  appropriation  by 
speculators  of  its  torrents  and  lakes,  the  demoli- 
tion of  its  castles  and  palaces,  have  in  many  parts 
made  it  featureless,  shadeless,  arid,  the  few  green 
things  which  still  keep  life  in  them  being  ruth- 
lessly gnawed,  as  they  sprout,  by  the  famished  flocks 
of  goats  and  sheep.  But  in  many  other  portions 
of  its  legend-haunted  soil  it  is  beautiful  still ;  in  its 
limpid  atmosphere,  in  the  lovely  colour  of  its  moun- 
tains, in  its  ancient  gardens,  in  its  gorgeous  sunsets, 
in  its  moonlit  nights,  in  its  roseate  dawns,  in  its 
immemorial  woods,  melodious  with  the  voice  of  the 
nightingale,  something  of  the  youth  of  the  world 
still  lingers,  still  awakes  with  the  blossoms  of  spring. 
In  harsh  incongruity  with  it,  incongruous  as  the 
scream  of  steam  on  its  waters,  as  the  buzz  of  machines 
in  its  plough-furrows,  as  the  rush  of  electric  cars 
down  its  ancient  streets,  is  the  House  of  Gunderode, 
which  has  ruled  over  it  for  three  generations. 

Having  helped  to  free  the  blood-mare  from  the 
lasso  cast  over  her,  her  saviours  put  a  halter  in  its 
stead  upon  her  neck,  and  jumped  upon  her  back 
with  an  agility  so  admirable  that  the  rest  of  the 
nations  applauded.  A  circus  trick  is  often  confused 
by  the  world  with  noble  horsemanship. 

The  Gunderode  were  chiefly,  in  their  stock  and  in 
their  temper,  Guthonic.  They  were  a  northern  race, 


iv  HELIANTHUS  53 

partly  through  origin,  and  largely  by  marriage. 
Their  character  was  the  antithesis  of  that  of  the 
Helianthine.  Connubial  unions  had  given  them 
many  mixed  strains  in  their  blood,  but  of  pure 
Helianthine  blood  they  had  not  a  drop. 

They  claimed  descent  from  Orderic,  a  chief  of  the 
Huns.  From  the  sixth  to  the  ninth  century  they  had 
been  robber-barons  ;  in  the  Middle  Ages  they  had 
become  lords  and  margraves  of  the  south-east  of 
Europe  ;  in  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries  by 
craft  and  judgment  and  shrewd  watching,  by  the  seiz- 
ing of  opportunity,  the  making  of  alliances,  and  the 
seeking  and  forming  of  great  marriages,  they  had 
increased  their  position  to  a  petty  sovereignty  ;  a 
duchy  at  first,  then  a  principality,  then  a  kingdom, 
gradually  strengthened  and  widened  by  the  annexation 
of  frontier  towns,  of  ecclesiastical  cities,  of  military 
bishoprics,  of  mountain  strongholds,  of  hill  and  lake, 
of  moor  and  fief. 

The  Gunderode  family  were  physically  brave,  of 
course  (for  in  those  times  courage  did  not  excite  the 
surprise  which  it  awakens  nowadays  !),  but  they  were 
politic,  wary,  keen  to  amass,  slow  to  relinquish ;  and 
these  qualities  obtained  them  more  advancement  than 
did  their  bravery.  The  sword  of  the  Gunderodes 
had  a  cross  for  its  hilt  and  a  double  edge  to  its  blade  ; 
it  served  them  equally  well  when  they  swore  an  oath 
as  when  they  cut  down  a  foe.  The  oaths  were  not 
always,  nor  were  they  often,  kept ;  but  the  foe  was 
always  cleft  through  skull  and  crop. 

In  the  hurly-burly  of  the  Napoleonic  wars  they 
had  been  careful  to  hunt  with  the  hounds  and  run 
with  the  hare.  All  things  brought  them  harvest. 
They  were  careful,  cautious,  and  cold.  Although 


54  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

they  had  been  always  absolutists  in  action  they  had 
contrived  to  obtain  a  reputation  for  liberal  principles. 
A  wild  boar,  breaking  a  huge  chain  fastened  round 
his  loins,  was  their  emblem.  It  pleased  the  popular 
fancy  as  an  emblem  of  freedom.  The  boar  sat  square 
upon  the  throne ;  and,  thinking  it  a  pity  that  the 
chain  should  be  of  no  use,  had  it  picked  up  and 
soldered  on  to  the  limbs  of  some  of  the  persons  who 
had  helped  him  to  mount ;  there  was  thus  no  danger 
of  their  ever  making  him  descend. 

In  the  effigy  of  the  wild  boar  it  was  true  the 
animal  was  represented  in  the  act  of  breaking  his 
own  chains  ;  but  the  populace,  paraphrasing  Dante, 
found  that  he  broke  them  only  to  forge  and  rivet  them 
the  more  firmly  on  others.  In  fact,  by  the  time  that 
the  third  generation  occupied  the  Helianthine  throne, 
the  Gunderodes  had  acquired  the  belief  that  they 
were  its  occupants  by  hereditary  right,  even  as  the 
up-stream  wolf,  as  Mark  Twain  calls  the  astute 
beast  of  the  fable,  held  the  belief  that  the  stream 
was  his  by  divine  right.  The  timid  remonstrances 
of  the  nation  were  heard  no  more  than  were  those  of 
the  lamb  by  the  wolf. 

The  House  of  Gunderode,  once  taking,  always 
retained ;  the  people  of  Helianthus  understood 
too  late  what  they  had  done  when  they  had  lent 
themselves  to  its  fatal  absorption  of  their  birthright. 
The  acquisition  of  supreme  dominion  had  been  so 
gradual  that  the  people  still  did  not  entirely  realise  what 
they  had  lost.  The  outward  forms  of  constitutional 
freedom  were  carefully  preserved ;  the  people  did 
not  perceive  that  the  substance  had  disappeared  out 
of  their  hold.  One  of  the  oddest  facts  about  the 
last  hundred  years  is  the  manner  in  which  the  popu- 


iv  HELIANTHUS  55 

lace  everywhere  has  parted  with  its  liberties,  and  been 
persuaded  to  imagine  that  it  has  increased  them. 

A  similar  history  to  that  of  the  Helianthines  can 
be  told  of  other  peoples.  Reigning  races  resemble 
planets  :  some  are  still  nebulous  and  scarcely  formed, 
bathed  in  the  effulgence  of  a  rising  sun ;  others  are 
exhausted  and  chill,  growing  dim  in  their  twilight ; 
others  again  are  at  their  perihelion,  most  glorious  to 
behold ;  but  the  manner  of  formation  and  increase 
of  them  all  is  identical. 

If  a  sceptical  mind  inquires,  doubtfully  why  the 
planets  were  created  at  all,  such  a  mind  no  doubt 
belongs  to  an  anarchist  and  not  to  an  astronomer. 

The  first  Gunderode  who  had  been  called  King  of 
Helianthus  (he  had  never  been  crowned,  nor  have  his 
descendants)  had  been  the  famous  Theodoric,  invari- 
ably called  the  Liberator,  of  whom  the  effigies  in 
bronze,  or  marble,  or  stone,  stand  thick  as  pebbles  on 
a  beach  all  over  the  land.  His  successor  had  been 
his  son  Theodoric  II.,  a  nonentity  though  a  martinet. 
The  third  in  succession  was  the  present  ruler,  John 
Orderic,  who  had  ascended  the  throne  at  five-and- 
twenty  years  old,  and  had  found  the  seat  to  his 
liking.  He  had  not  the  wonderful  protean  abilities 
of  his  nephew  Julius,  which  enabled  the  latter  to  be 
a  despot  and  to  seem  a  dilettante,  to  garrotte  a  nation 
and  to  play  the  violin,  to  telephone  the  order  for  a 
massacre  and  to  model  the  shape  of  a  fusee-box : 
that  kind  of  activity  was  not  in  John  of  Gunderode, 
who  was  as  incapable  of  versatility  as  a  wooden 
nutmeg.  He  even,  indeed,  viewed  with  contempt 
these  kaleidoscopic  qualities  in  his  nephew;  and 
remained  cold  when  the  War-lord  of  the  Guthones 
sang,  fiddled,  painted,  modelled,  wrote  an  oratorio, 


56  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

or  designed  a  uniform,  to  the  admiration  of  a  wonder- 
ing world. 

But  he  was  a  shrewd,  keen,  selfish,  cautious  ruler  and 
reader  of  men.  Sentiment  never  interfered  in  him  with 
judgment,  and  no  instinct  of  kindness  ever  weakened 
his  wisdom.  He  was  exceedingly  strong  in  many 
things ;  in  nothing  stronger  than  in  never  being 
drawn  into  giving  his  reasons.  Whoever  gives  his 
reasons,  gives  a  hostage  to  his  adversaries.  He 
acted  ;  and  let  others  waste  their  time,  if  they  chose, 
in  conjectures  as  to  why  his  acts  took  such  a  shape 
instead  of  such  another.  This  spared  him  much 
time,  and  saved  him  from  ever  contradicting  himself. 
It  was  thus  that  he  made  a  gramme  of  brains  do  the 
work  of  an  ounce,  and  a  very  ordinary  personage 
appear  a  statesman  and  a  diplomatist. 

The  brain,  moreover,  grows  keener  by  being 
incessantly  sharpened  on  the  grindstone  of  self- 
interest  and  suspicion  ;  and  by  the  time  he  was 
forty  years  old  he  had  become  an  able  tactician 
and  an  unerring  observer.  Had  he  been  born  in 
private  life  he  would  have  been  respected  by  his 
neighbours,  secret  but  severe  in  his  business  trans- 
actions, harsh  but  faithful  as  a  husband,  cold  but 
careful  as  a  father ;  he  would  have  gone  unloved 
through  life,  but  in  death  would  have  been  regretted 
by  his  bankers  if  cursed  by  his  clerks. 

In  the  exalted  position  which  he  filled,  his  worst 
qualities  were  cultured  and  strengthened,  and  his 
better  qualities  early  perished  of  atrophy,  under 
the  stifling  compost  which  makes  the  hot-beds  of 
Courts. 

The  Chinese,  it  is  said,  put  a  child  into  a  vase  of 
pottery  and  keep  him  in  it  until  he  is  a  man  ;  in 


iv  HELIANTHUS  57 

consequence  his  limbs  and  body  never  grow  bigger 
than  the  po*-  which  confines  them.  The  pot  into 
which  a  monarch  is  put  is  not  seen,  and  does  not 
imprison  his  body,  only  his  mind  ;  and  in  old  times 
his  jester  was  privileged  to  come  and  shake  bells, 
and  tell  truths,  over  the  pot.  But  there  are  no  jest- 
ers of  that  kind  now ;  there  are  only  newspapers  to 
do  the  fooling,  and  if  any  truth  is  told  by  them 
they  are  forthwith  prosecuted  for  libel.  Actions  for 
lese  majeste  are  very  frequent  in  Helianthus  ;  months 
and  even  years  of  imprisonment  punish  any  plain 
speaking  about  distinguished  persons,  so  that  the 
Press  of  the  country  never  by  any  chance  ventures 
to  blame  the  House  of  Gunderode. 

A  little  girl  once  said  to  another :  <  What  do  you 
think  God  is  like  ? '  *  Like  my  Papa,'  replied  the 
other  without  hesitation.  f  Like  my  Papa,  you 
mean/  said  the  first,  with  indignant  conviction.  It 
is  probable  that  every  monarch  has  in  his  mind's  eye 
a  Deity  fashioned,  not  like  his  sire,  but  after  his  own 
likeness,  or  rather  that  which  he  imagines  is  his  like- 
ness. This  Deity  is  more  or  less  real,  more  or  less 
near,  more  or  less  to  be  admired  or  dreaded,  accord- 
ing to  the  temperament  of  the  sovereign  he  protects. 
Some  go  so  far  as  to  believe  that  they  have  received 
an  exequatur  from  the  Most  High  in  the  same  way  as 
they  give  one  to  their  clergy.  It  is  these  rulers  who 
believe  in  the  crime  of  lese  majeste^  and  imprison 
professors,  caricaturists,  comic  singers,  and  workmen 
for  the  treason  of  satire  or  laughter.  Others  do  not 
go  so  far  as  this ;  they  have  doubts  about  their  own 
celestial  origin  and  appointment;  they  imagine  that 
what  they  call  Providence  is  a  kind  of  Chief  Con- 
stable, and  consider  themselves  as  appointed  his  sub- 


58  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

inspectors ;  but  they,  also,  believe  in  Use  majest'e  as 
the  policeman  believes  in  tip-cat  and  hooligans  ;  like 
tip-cat  and  hooligans  it  must  be  put  down  at  all  costs. 

To  this  latter  category  John  of  Gunderode  inclined 
from  the  bias  of  his  temperament.  He  was  a  man  of 
much  good  common  sense,  and  his  Deity  was  a  nebu- 
lous personality,  vague,  remote,  not  needing  much 
consideration,  a  useful  figure  to  carry  in  procession, 
as  a  black  Virgin  or  a  waxen  Jesus  is  carried  round  a 
town  on  great  occasions  such  as  a  visitation  of  cholera 
or  a  famine.  That  he  was  guided  by  the  Most  High 
when  he  made  war,  sent  socialists  to  a  penitentiary, 
escaped  a  pistol  shot,  or  prevented  a  popular  measure 
from  becoming  law,  he  did  not  believe,  as  his  nephew 
Julius  believed  it  of  himself ;  he  did  not  think  himself 
the  Elder  Brother  of  Christ,  and  the  administrator  of 
Providence,  as  Julius  believed  himself  to  be.  Deity 
was  to  him  a  quant  it  e  neglige  able  ^  exceedingly  neglige- 
able.  Cromwell  in  his  famous  exhortation  placed 
his  God  first,  and  his  gunpowder  second.  John  of 
Gunderode  reversed  the  order  of  the  precedence. 
The  casting  of  his  cannon  was  of  more  importance 
to  him  than  the  celebration  of  a  Te  Deum  or  a 
Hosanna;  his  mind  was  narrow  but  robust. 

Second  only  to  the  political  successes  of  his  reign 
was  the  interest  possessed  for  him  by  the  fluctuations 
of  his  investments.  A  potentate  has  lately  said  with 
considerable  naivete  that  the  prestige  of  his  order 
has  diminished  in  these  later  years ;  he  might  have 
said  that  it  is  not  possible  for  any  one  man  to  be  at 
once  a  Csesar  Imperator,  a  Grand  Monarque,  and  an 
impassioned  investor  in  Preference  Shares. 

At  present  the  nations  in  general  do  not  realise 
that  the  anointed  sovereigns  of  the  world  have 


iv  HELIANTHUS  59 

swords  at  their  sides  and  cannon  at  their  command, 
and  crowns  and  sceptres,  orbs  and  miniver,  in  their 
wardrobes,  but  keep  in  their  hands  the  Share  List  as 
their  favourite  reading :  when  the  nations  do  realise 
this,  {  prestige '  will  drop  lower  still,  and  crowns  will 
cease  to  be  quoted  at  par. 

At  an  early  age  the  present  King  of  Helianthus 
had  been  wedded  by  his  father  to  a  princess  of  a  small 
northern  kingdom  ;  a  plain,  dull,  uninteresting  young 
woman  who  gave  birth  to  a  son,  or,  as  the  jour- 
nalists said,  to  a  Crown  Prince,  and  then,  with  her 
usual  discretion,  retired  into  the  grave,  leaving  her 
place  to  be  filled  by  a  lovelier  successor,  a  grand- 
daughter of  the  famous  aged  Emperor  Gregory, 
who  was  called  the  Nestor  of  Europe,  the  ruler  of 
that  enormous  empire  of  which  the  huge  penumbra 
overshadows  two  quarters  of  the  globe. 

She  was  an  exceedingly  beautiful  woman,  with 
an  infinite  grace  of  form  and  bearing,  and  a  wistful 
melancholy  in  her  eyes,  which  were  of  the  colour  of 
the  northern  seas  in  summer.  In  ten  sad  years  this 
patient  victim  of  policy  had  borne  King  John  four 
sons  and  two  daughters :  Elim,  Duke  of  Othyris ; 
Alexis,  Prince  of  Tyras ;  Constantine,  Duke  of 
Esthonia;  Frederic,  Count  of  Idumaea;  and  two 
daughters,  Ottoline  and  Euphrosyne,  the  former 
married  to  a  LillienstaufFen,  the  latter  betrothed  to 
her  cousin,  a  great-grandson  of  the  Emperor  Gregory. 

On  the  hard  granite  ofthe  King's  irresponsive,  sullen, 
unkind  temperament,  the  Queen's  sensitive  and  timid 
nature  had  been  thrown  as  a  hind  is  thrown  on  a  rock 
to  be  grallocked.  Fear  came  into  her  lovely  startled 
eyes  whenever  she  heard  his  step  or  his  voice,  as  into 
the  eyes  of  the  doe  when  she  sees  the  steel  gleam  of 


60  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

the  death-tubes  shine  above  the  heather.  Her  own 
family  knew  that  she  was  extremely  unhappy  ;  but 
no  imperial  or  royal  family  can  interfere  in  the 
unhappiness  which  may  ensue  from  one  of  its  State 
alliances  ;  the  only  anxiety  and  effort  of  the  family  is 
to  prevent  any  publicity  of  the  fact  that  the  union 
is  discord,  and  this  was  easy  in  her  case,  for  she  shrank 
from  all  publicity  herself.  '  Faut  ensorceler  ton  homme, 
ma  petite!  Ouf  !  tu  es  belle  /'  said  old  Gregory  to 
her  once ;  but  he  knew  that  no  living  woman  could 
move  by  a  hair's  breadth  the  temper  of  John  of 
Gunderode  any  more  than  a  moonbeam  can  melt  a 
stone.  That  the  King  was  not  more  unkind  than  he 
was  to  her,  was  due  to  the  great  respect  he  felt  for 
the  aged  tyrant  of  the  Septentriones,  and  to  the 
residence  in  the  country  of  one  of  her  brothers,  the 
Grand  Duke  Basil.  Her  first-born,  so  like  her 
physically  and  morally,  had  for  her  sake  as  well  as  for 
his  own  been  dear  to  her  brother,  a  celibate,  a  con- 
noisseur, a  fine  musician,  a  profound  scholar,  a  prey 
to  the  melancholy  of  desires  which  nothing  earthly 
could  satisfy,  and  of  ill-health  which  could  be  miti- 
gated by  care  and  by  climate,  but  never  be  cured. 
The  greater  part  of  Elim's  early  youth  was  spent 
with  his  uncle  Basil  in  the  palaces  which  the  Grand 
Duke  had  purchased  in  his  sister's  adopted  country 
—  that  Helianthus  so  dear  to  all  Hellenists  and 
Latinists  for  its  incomparable  traditions,  its  art,  its 
literature,  its  history. 

The  boy,  extremely  impressionable  in  feeling,  was 
strongly  resistant  to  alien  mental  influence.  Nothing 
could  be  done  with  him  intellectually  when  he  did 
not  choose.  They  could  make  him  unhappy,  but 
they  could  not  make  him  receptive.  To  some  kinds 


IV 


HELIANTHUS  61 


of  influence  he  was  very  open,  but  to  many  he  was 
adamant.  This  power  of  passive  but  unyielding 
resistance  had  preserved  his  originality. 

To  his  uncle  Basil,  with  his  scholar's  reverence 
for  the  past  and  his  satirist's  contempt  for  the 
present,  his  brother-in-law  of  Gunderode  was  an 
intolerably  false  note  in  that  classic  harmony  which 
had  been  called,  for  two  thousand  years,  Helianthus  ; 
a  false  note,  like  a  motor-car  on  the  plain  of 
Thebes,  a  cyclist  under  the  palms  of  Nile,  a  con- 
script on  guard  on  the  Capitol,  a  policeman  in 
front  of  York  Minster,  an  American  tourist  smoking 
where  the  lions  still  roam  amongst  the  ruins  of 
Palmyra ;  like  any  one  or  any  thing  discordant,  in- 
congruous, irritating,  commonplace,  intolerable ; 
absolutely  intolerable  as  the  ruler  of  a  State  which 
was  steeped  in  classic  and  poetic  memories,  and  was 
in  its  atmosphere,  in  its  legends,  in  its  genius,  in  its 
landscapes,  full  of  a  spiritual  and  melancholy  beauty. 

(  Heavens  and  earth,  he  is  as  incongruous  here  as 
a  kepi  set  on  the  head  of  an  Apollo  ! '  thought  the 
Grand  Duke.  But  of  what  he  thought  and  of  what 
he  felt  concerning  his  sister's  husband  he  never 
spoke. 

Between  Elim  and  his  father  there  had  been  always 
a  great  antagonism.  As  a  child  he  had  a  very  sensitive 
musical  ear,  and  the  shrieking  of  fifes  and  the  beating 
of  drums  were  a  torture  to  him ;  he  would  run  off 
and  hide  anywhere  he  could,  away  from  the  squeak 
of  the  bugle,  and  cover  his  ears  with  his  hands 
whenever  he  heard  regiments  marching  past  the 
palace,  or  merely  a  company  going  to  change 
guard.  His  governor,  by  the  King's  order,  showed 
no  mercy  to  this  instinct ;  and  frequently  the 


62  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

boy  was  taken  to  the  Field  of  Ares,  or  to  one 
of  the  barrack-yards,  simply  to  punish  his  tym- 
panum for  its  sensitiveness  and  give  his  nerves 
cruel  suffering.  To  his  father's  taste,  the  shrill 
fife  and  the  sullen  drum  gave  the  only  melody 
worth  hearing.  When  his  wife  timidly  urged  in 
Elim's  excuse,  that  the  child  Wolfgang  Mozart 
had  shown  a  similar  sensibility,  the  monarch  looked 
at  her  with  astonishment.  What  was  Mozart?  A 
Kapelmeister  \  Mozart  had  never  been  even  a  drum- 
major  ! 

When  Elim  was  ten  years  old  a  sea  eagle  was 
brought  one  day  to  the  Palace,  and  caged  on  one  of 
the  terraces  overlooking  the  sea.  It  had  a  wounded 
wing  and  had  been  captured  when  resting  on  the 
mast  of  a  fishing-coble.  The  imprisonment  and 
immobility  of  the  grand  bird  tortured  the  little 
Prince  every  day  that  he  went  into  the  gardens. 
To  see  its  closed  eyes,  its  drooped  pinions,  its 
ruffled  and  lustreless  plumage,  its  wretched  restless 
movements  at  times  in  its  narrow  prison,  followed 
by  long  hours  when  it  sat  motionless  in  stupor 
and  despair,  so  wrought  upon  his  nerves  that  it 
became  almost  an  illness  to  him.  In  vain  did  his 
tutors  punish,  and  his  mother  try  to  reason  with  him. 

f  Set  him  free,'  he  said  in  an  anguish  of  sym- 
pathy. '  Set  him  free.  Shut  me  up  in  his  place. 
But  set  him  free.' 

The  Queen,  who  knew  that  her  best-beloved  son 
had  inherited  that  impulse  of  tenderness  and  pity 
from  herself,  was  at  last  so  moved  by  the  distress  of 
the  child,  and  that  of  the  bird,  that  she  ventured  to 
beg  for  the  freedom  of  the  eagle  of  her  husband. 


iv  HELIANTHUS  63 

The  broken  wing  had  healed,  flight  would,  she  urged, 
be  possible,  and  a  painful  sight  would  be  spared  to 
a  tensitive  little  soul. 

The  King  seldom  granted  any  request  of  hers : 
her  wishes  always  appeared  to  him  sentimental  fancies 
which  were  best  nipped  in  the  bud;  everything  seemed 
sentimental  in  his  sight  which  was  not  connected  with 
finance  or  with  the  army.  She  had  no  influence 
whatever  on  him  ;  her  delicacy  of  beauty,  physical  and 
moral,  was  no  more  to  him  than  the  rose  hues  of  the 
dianthus  —  no  more  than  the  gemmae  are  to  the 
rocks  on  which  the  sea  waves  cast  them.  Her  inter- 
cession was  therefore  seldom  successful,  her  gentle 
voice  was  seldom  listened  to  ;  but  to  her  surprise  he 
this  time  acceded  to  her  wish. 

f  But  make  this  condition  with  your  boy,'  he 
said  to  her.  '  He  is  idle,  they  tell  me,  and  back- 
ward. Let  him  learn  the  first  book  of  the  Iliad  by 
heart  in  the  Latin  translation.  When  he  can  recite 
it,  the  bird  shall  be  set  free.' 

Elim,  who  was  certainly  backward,  gave  himself 
to  the  task  as  he  had  never  done  to  any  other 
through  fear  of  punishment  or  promise  of  pleasure. 
He  learned  the  allotted  verse  with  a  stubborn  devo- 
tion to  its  difficult  text  which  his  tutors  had  never 
seen  in  him,  and  in  much  less  time  than  they  had 
expected.  With  a  rapidity  which  seemed  incredible 
to  them,  and  a  perfect  accuracy  of  quantity  and  of 
accent,  he  committed  to  memory  the  long  sonorous 
lines,  and  declaimed  them  to  his  preceptor,  standing 
with  his  hands  behind  his  back,  and  the  sun  in  his 
face,  on  the  sea-terrace  where  the  bird  was  caged 
beneath  a  spreading  plane-tree. 

His  parents  were  present ;  his  mother's  eyes  were 


64  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

filled  with  tears  of  delight  and  pride ;  his  father 
stood  with  his  eternal  cigarette  between  his  lips,  and 
listened  with  critical  coldness  and  in  harsh  readiness 
to  discover  a  flaw  in  word  or  measure  ;  he  had  come 
in  from  shooting,  and  his  gun  was  lying  across  a 
garden  chair  by  his  side.  But  Elim  made  no  mistake. 
Whilst  he  recited  the  verse  his  eyes  were  fixed  on 
the  dark,  motionless,  pining  form  of  the  imprisoned 
eagle.  Its  ransom  depended  on  himself;  he  made 
no  fault  of  memory  or  quantity.  When  he  had 
spoken  the  last  line  he  stood  silent,  breathless,  red 
as  a  rose,  with  hope  and  expectation. 

{ It  was  well  said,  was  it  not  ? '  his  mother  mur- 
mured timidly  to  her  husband. 

The  King  nodded. 

t  Open  the  eagle's  cage,'  he  said  to  one  of  his 
gentlemen. 

The  child  sprang  forward  and  kissed  his  father's 
hand  in  a  rapture  of  joy  and  gratitude. 

1  No  sentiment ! '  said  the  sovereign,  putting  him 
aside  with  some  impatience.  He  disliked  all  emotion 
and  all  demonstration. 

One  of  the  gentlemen  of  the  household  had 
made  believe  to  open  the  door  of  the  cage,  but  in 
reality  a  gardener  had  executed  the  order ;  it  was 
done  not  without  danger,  for  the  bird,  realising  its 
liberty,  might  have  used  its  strength  of  beak  or  claws. 

They  stood  together  and  watched,  the  sovereigns 
in  front,  the  boy  by  their  side,  the  courtiers  behind. 
The  ecstasy  and  expectation  on  Elim's  fair  face  were 
like  those  on  the  face  of  a  young  seraph  in  a  Fra 
Angelico  fresco ;  his  lips  were  parted,  his  breath 
came  fast  and  loud,  he  trembled  in  every  nerve 
with  his  great  joy. 


iv  HELIANTHUS  65 

The  door  of  the  cage  was  drawn  open ;  the  men 
retreated ;  for  some  moments  the  bird  did  not  seem 
to  see  that  anything  had  happened ;  he  sat,  a 
miserable  heap  of  dull  tarnished  feathers,  his  head 
sunk  into  his  neck.  Then,  slowly,  he  seemed  to 
become  aware  of  more  air,  more  light,  of  something 
unusual ;  he  shook  his  plumage,  his  wings  began  to 
thrill  and  move  and  open,  his  head  was  lifted,  his 
eyes  gazed  at  his  comrade  the  sun  in  the  blue  sum- 
mer heavens. 

The  Queen  thought  of  the  eagle  in  the  story  of 
Dostoiewsky,  the  eagle  that  the  prisoners  in  Siberia 
set  free,  and  watched,  winging  his  way  over  the 
snowy  steppes  in  that  freedom  which  was  for  ever 
denied  to  themselves. 

(  Dear  child  !  '  she  murmured,  and  laid  her  hand 
on  Elim's  golden  head. 

The  bird  paused  a  moment  on  the  threshold 
of  his  prison,  then  with  expanded  wings  sailed, 
slowly  and  majestically,  over  the  marble  parapet  of 
the  terrace,  out  into  the  air  and  above  the  sea. 

Elim  stood  transfixed  and  transfigured  by  ecstasy 
as  his  gaze  followed  the  flight  of  the  captive  he  had 
set  free. 

The  King  also  followed  the  flight  of  the  bird 
with  his  eyes.  His  gun,  lying  across  the  chair,  was 
loaded ;  he  took  it,  and  raised  it  to  his  shoulder, 
aimed  at  the  eagle  rising  higher  and  higher  and 
higher  into  the  blue  ether,  and  fired. 

The  shot  rang  sharp  and  hard  through  the 
morning  stillness.  Another  followed  it.  The  eagle 
dropped  dead  into  the  sea.  John  of  Gunderode 
gave  his  breech-loader  to  one  of  his  attendants. 

Elim,    his    eyes    wide    open    in    horror,    swayed 


66  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

blindly  to  and  fro,  then  fell  back  insensible  into  his 
mother's  trembling  arms. 

1  Little  idiot ! '  said  his  father,  with  contempt. 
He  had  not  meant  to  do  anything  especially  unkind  ; 
he  had  followed  that  insane  impulse  of  the  sportsman 
to  kill  everything  that  flies,  which,  in  its  continual 
indulgence,  becomes  a  form  of  dementia. 

The  courtiers,  the  ladies,  the  preceptors  joined 
in  a  chorus  of  wondering  admiration :  what  sight, 
what  precision,  what  wonderful  accuracy  of  aim  ! 

The  Crown  Prince  gave  the  big  boy's  guffaw  of 
enjoyment.  The  younger  children  screamed  shrilly 
with  delight  and  danced  in  glee. 

For  several  weeks  Elim's  life  was  despaired  of: 
meningitis  in  its  worst  shape  pressed  its  red-hot 
iron  gauntlet  on  his  brain  and  spine ;  the  devotion 
of  his  mother  saved  him. 

From  that  morning  his  soul  was  rilled  with  the 
most  unconquerable  distrust  of  every  act  and  word  of 
his  father's ;  and  a  sombre  and  mutual  dislike  grew  up 
between  them  as  between  the  betrayed  and  the 
betrayer.  It  grew  with  growth,  and  each  felt  for  the 
other  an  unchangeable  and  deeply-rooted  aversion. 

After  twenty  years  of  an  exemplary  life,  during 
which  she  had  never  known  a  moment's  free  will,  or 
been  allowed  a  moment's  individual  action,  the  fair 
Queen  had  died,  as  a  flower  without  light  or  air 
fades  away  and  perishes. 

c  No  one  wants  me  any  more,'  she  said,  with 
a  patient  smile.  Her  eldest  and  best-beloved  son 
threw  his  arms  about  her  with  passionate  tenderness 
as  though  he  would  dispute  her  with  death  itself, 
for  there  was  an  exquisite  sympathy  between  them. 


iv  HELIANTHUS  67 

'  I  shall  want  you  all  my  life,  my  darling  mother  ! ' 

Her  wasted,  transparent  hand  rested  fondly  on 
his  hair.  '  Oh,  my  love,  you  will  have  so  many 
other  ties.' 

1  Perhaps  so,  perhaps  not,'  said  Elim.  '  None 
will  or  can  be  to  me  what  you  have  been,  my  dear- 
est and  best ! ' 

He  had  given  to  her  the  most  devoted  affection 
and  sympathy,  and  his  indignation  at  his  father's 
treatment  of  her  had  been  only  the  more  intense 
and  embittered  because  it  had  perforce  been  shut  up 
in  his  own  breast. 

Elim  grew  up  to  a  beautiful  adolescence,  and  a 
manhood  of  great  promise  for  the  future,  should  he 
ever  reign  ;  he  resembled  the  Adonis  of  the  Soleia 
in  form  and  feature,  and  was  remarkable  for  grace 
and  charm  rather  than  for  masculine  force.  His 
health  was  good,  or,  at  least,  he  never  gratified  any 
of  the  Court  physicians  by  complaining  of  it ;  his 
constitution  was  sound,  but  he  suffered  from  the  chief 
of  modern  diseases,  ennui ;  and  it  is  the  procreator 
of  many  others.  It  always  seemed  to  him  that  he 
had  been  born  to  be  the  victim  of  captivity  like 
any  unhappy  animal  who  comes  out  of  its  mother's 
womb  in  the  cage  of  a  menagerie,  and  passes  infancy 
and  youth  behind  those  bars,  and  is  supposed  by 
fools  to  know  no  other  life  and  to  want  no  other, 
because  of  any  other  he  has  only  instinct  and  no 
experience  to  tell  him. 

That  he  could  never  be  induced  to  see  that  his  own 
order  was  a  thing  apart,  a  species  made  of  different 
clay  to  the  general,  was  an  exasperation  to  all  his 
relatives.  Princes,  although  in  felt  hats  and  ulsters, 


68  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

ought  to  feel  themselves  altogether  apart  from  the 
crowds  similarly  clad  on  a  highway,  a  race-course,  or 
a  skating-ground.  This  sense  of  his  own  electness 
was  altogether  missing  in  him  ;  and  his  want  of  it 
was  an  affront  to  those  who  had  the  most  profound 
belief  that  they  were  pure  gold,  and  every  one  else 
copper,  or  tin,  or  nickel. 

The  diversions  of  his  brother  Tyras  were  chiefly 
such  as  a  decent  street-sweeper  or  stone-breaker 
would  be  ashamed  of,  but  they  did  not  offend  the 
family  as  greatly  as  the  opinions  and  practices  of 
Othyris.  Privilege  covered  them  ;  whereas  Othyris 
tore  privilege  to  tatters.  He  hated  the  men  who 
bent  their  backs  in  two  as  they  were  received 
by  him ;  he  hated  the  women  who  dropped  before 
him  curtsies  so  low  that  they  seemed  to  sink 
into  the  carpet.  The  supple  spine,  the  pliable 
knees,  seemed  to  him  to  degrade  humanity  in 
their  persons.  He  was  popular  with  the  nation, 
but  the  Court  was  unanimous  in  its  dislike  of  him. 
The  Court  saw  its  vested  interests,  its  shibboleths, 
its  salaries,  its  actual  existence,  menaced  by  him ; 
and  except  in  a  few  women  he  had  no  friends  in 
his  father's  palaces  or  even  in  his  own.  Every  one 
whose  interests  were  rooted  in  Court  favour,  Court 
honours,  Court  pomps  and  vanities,  dignities  and 
perquisites,  knowing  that  he  was  near  enough  in 
the  line  of  succession  to  make  his  advent  to  the 
throne  a  serious  possibility,  could  not  but  view  with 
horror  and  with  terror  the  eventuality  of  a  reign  in 
which  they  would  all,  figuratively  speaking,  be  put 
on  rations  of  black  bread,  if  they  were  not  bundled 
neck  and  crop  out  of  their  Holy  of  Holies  into 
ordinary  and  undecorated  life. 


iv  HELIANTHUS  69 

When  he  had  been  a  mere  youth  they  had  thought 
that  his  eccentricities  would  wear  smooth  with  time ; 
but  year  after  year  passed,  and  he  did  not  abandon 
his  early  opinions  as  most  men  do  ;  he  did  not  wash 
in  the  Jordan  of  conventionality  and  become  cleansed. 
When  the  Court  contemplated  all  that  such  a  king 
would  mean  to  them,  they  felt  that  even  such  a 
saintly  woman  as  Princess  Gertrude  ought  to  be 
divorced,  as  the  Creole  sinner  Josephine  had  been, 
for  the  sake  of  the  public  weal. 

'  Mine  is  a  vie  manqueej  thought  Othyris  often. 
1 1  am  of  what  is  called  royal  birth,  and  I  have  no 
belief  in  royalty.  I  am  a  revolutionist  at  heart,  but 
loyalty  to  my  family  forbids  me  to  be  so  in  action. 
I  am  an  artist  in  instinct  and  appreciation,  but  I  have 
not  the  artist's  power  to  create,  and  to  absorb  himself 
in  his  creations.  All  my  sympathies  are  with  the 
poor  and  the  weak,  and  I  am  forced  to  live  with 
the  rich  and  the  strong.  I  abhor  war  and  militarism, 
and  I  am  made,  perforce,  a  Colonel  of  Cuirassiers  and 
a  General  of  a  Division.  I  know  not  what  my 
end  may  be,  but  I  shall  probably  say,  like  my  uncle 
Basil,  "  I  have  loved  justice  and  hated  iniquity, 
wherefore  now  I  die  in  exile." 

The  Grand  Duke  Basil  also  hated  the  military  type 
and  hated  militarism.  His  constitution  had  been 
ruined  by  its  discipline,  and  his  youth  embittered  by 
its  rigours.  But  he  was  too  honourable  a  man  to  per- 
mit himself  to  prejudice  the  son  against  the  father. 
Elim  never  heard  from  him  a  disparaging  word  of 
either  the  King  or  the  King's  measures ;  but  the 
influence  of  the  intellectual  atmosphere  which  sur- 
rounded him  in  his  uncle's  house  inevitably  gave  its 
colour  and  its  bias  to  his  mind,  which  had  all  the 


yo  -HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

receptivity  of  youth  with  the  quick  apprehension 
natural  to  talent,  and  an  inborn  tendency  to  resist 
conventional  ideas.  The  King's  aversion  to  his 
brother-in-law  was  as  great  as  that  of  the  Grand  Duke 
to  him  ;  but  in  the  monarch  every  sentiment  was  sub- 
ordinate to  the  organ  of  acquisitiveness  ;  and  he  loved 
the  fortune  of  Basil  if  he  detested  his  person.  There- 
fore the  smooth  ice  of  a  chill,  impeccable  courtesy 
covered  their  relations  at  all  times,  and,  through  his 
uncle's  wishes  and  influence,  Elim  enjoyed  a  measure 
of  repose  and  of  freedom  which  otherwise  would 
never  have  been  his  portion.  In  the  beautiful  soli- 
tudes of  ./Enothrea,  his  uncle's  favourite  sojourn,  he 
could  forget  that  he  was  a  prince  and  be  the  poet, 
the  artist,  the  dreamer,  which  nature  had  made  him. 

Basil,  the  King  thought,  emasculated  the  character 
of  a  youth  already  only  too  susceptible  to  all  senti- 
mental follies  and  heresies  ;  but  if  Paris  were  well 
worth  the  sacrifice  of  a  mass,  according  to  the 
Bearnais,  the  vast  fortune  of  his  brother-in-law 
would,  he  considered,  be  well  worth  that  of  a 
foolish  young  man  ;  and  he  was  led  the  more  easily 
to  this  conclusion  by  what  he  knew  of  the  extreme 
uncertainty  of  the  life  of  the  Grand  Duke,  who  had 
cardiac  affections  of  the  most  dangerous  kind,  and 
might  die  at  any  moment,  —  as,  in  fact,  he  did  die, 
suddenly,  as  he  strolled  amongst  his  roses  one  summer 
day,  when  Elim  was  twenty  years  old.  Everything 
he  possessed  in  Helianthus,  all  his  great  estates  and 
the  chief  bulk  of  his  personalty,  was  bequeathed  to 
his  nephew,  and  rendered  him  one  of  the  richest 
princes  of  Europe. 

Othyris  was  considered  by  his  family  to  encourage 
the  most  subversive  projects  upon  his  lands,  and 


iv  HELIANTHUS  71 

at  the  same  time  to  keep  up  the  most  antiquated 
absurdities.  Worse  still,  he  had  even  desired  and 
asked  the  King's  permission  to  refuse  the  grant 
made  to  him  on  the  Civil  List  by  the  nation  in  common 
with  the  other  princes.  When  he  urged  that  he  did 
not  require  such  an  addition  to  his  wealth,  the  expla- 
nation seemed  as  bad  as  the  intention  which  prompted 
it.  Who  had  ever  heard  in  empire,  kingdom,  or 
principality  of  a  royal  person  who  declined  the 
people's  money  ?  He  was  not  permitted  by  his 
father  to  have  his  way  in  this,  and  could  only  relieve 
his  conscience  by  spending  all  of  it  in  public  works 
or  private  charity,  so  that  the  money  went  indirectly 
back  to  the  nation  which  gave  it :  a  most  senseless 
and  demoralising  proceeding,  according  to  his  rela- 
tives, who  always  considered  all  provisions  made 
for  them  by  the  State  miserably  mean  and  wholly 
inferior  to  their  merits. 

It  also  made  his  family  very  angry  that  Othyris 
would  never  take  any  precautions  for  his  own  safety. 
He  went  about  in  town  or  country,  on  foot  or  on 
horseback,  or  on  his  mail  phaeton,  like  any  private 
gentleman.  His  indifference  to  danger,  or  his  con- 
fidence in  his  popularity,  seemed  a  reflection  on  the 
fears  of  his  family  in  surrounding  themselves  with 
so  many  precautions. 

He  left  the  motor-cars  and  the  bicycles  to  his 
brothers ;  they  seemed  to  him  to  profane  the  marble 
dust  and  the  herb-scented  moors  of  Helianthus.  He 
loved  his  horses ;  and  like  Lord  Byron  he  loved  to 
ride  in  the  brilliant  moonlight  along  the  silent  sands, 
or  over  the  fragrant  plains,  with  nothing  beside  him 
but  the  shadows  of  himself  and  of  his  steed,  and  the 
scent  of  the  sea  or  the  perfume  of  the  wild  thyme  in 


72  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

his  nostrils.  His  stables  were  full  of  the  fleetest  and 
finest  horses  in  Europe ;  but  he  took  no  pleasure  in 
the  stupid  and  barbaric  pastime  of  racing.  To  see  a 
colt  or  a  filly  flogged  along  a  course,  with  streaming 
sides  and  smoking  nostrils,  was  to  him  a  hateful  sight. 
To  enhance  the  interest  of  the  struggle  by  putting 
money  on  it,  as  you  add  cayenne  to  your  soup,  seemed 
to  him  an  avowal  that  you  were  moved  by  the  basest 
of  appetites  ;  he  esteemed  more  highly  the  punters  at 
Monte  Carlo  than  the  members  of  the  Jockey  Clubs. 

'  You  were  born  without  the  gambling  instinct, 
but  you  can  acquire  it.  People  do  not  like  opium 
when  they  begin  it,'  said  Tyras  to  him  once.  But 
the  acquisition  did  not  seem  to  him  desirable  ;  and  he 
remained  aloof  from  the  Turf  as  from  the  narcotic. 

There  was  racing  all  over  Helianthus :  there  had 
been  racing  of  all  kinds  in  the  land  for  over  two 
thousand  years,  and  the  ruins  of  many  a  great  hippo- 
drome towered  on  lonely  wastes  and  amidst  crowded 
streets,  in  witness  of  the  national  pastime  and  its 
universal  fascination.  Elim's  dislike  to  it,  and  his 
refusal  ever  to  enter  a  horse  for  a  race,  or  to  keep  a 
racing-stable,  was  one  of  the  few  unpopular  traits  in 
his  character. 

'  Go  against  a  nation's  best  interests,  and  as  likely 
as  not  it  will  lick  your  feet,'  his  uncle  Basil  had  said 
once  to  him.  f  But  oppose  its  amusements  and  ks 
appetites,  and  it  will  gibbet  you.' 

*  I  will  take  the  risk,'  said  Elim.  f  At  least,  I  shall 
not  oppose  them ;  but  I  shall  not  share  them.' 

The  King  did  not  interfere  in  this  matter;  he 
felt  obliged  to  attend  the  great  races  of  the  year  for 
the  sake  of  popularity,  but  he  had  a  good  deal  of 
common  sense  about  certain  things,  and  he  con- 


iv  HELIANTHUS  73 

sidered  the  Turf  guilty  of  the  deterioration  of  the 
equine  race,  by  the  substitution  of  mere  speed  for 
staying  power. 

Races  could  do  nothing  to  improve  the  breeds  of 
cavalry  horses  ;  he  would  have  revived  the  massive 
destrier  of  Philippe  Auguste  and  of  Barbarossa  had 
he  been  able. 

So  Othyris,  unmolested  in  this  matter,  used  his 
horses  only  for  exercise ;  and,  although  he  rode  far 
and  fast,  never  brought  them  back  distressed  or  in  a 
lather.  What  he  especially  enjoyed  was  to  escape 
from  the  gentlemen  riding  after  him,  and  get  out  by 
himself  into  the  solitudes  of  the  more  distant  country, 
taking  his  chance  of  the  banded  robbers  whose 
exploits  still  gave  a  dramatic  colour  to  the  thickets  of 
oleanders  and  pomegranates  by  the  sea  shores,  and  to 
the  ilex  and  olive  woods  of  the  more  remote  hillsides. 

*  Your  lonely  rides  are  very  dangerous,'  his  elder 
brother  said  to  him  one  day. 

*  Yes,  perhaps,'    said  Othyris.     c  But  not  much 
more  dangerous  than  to  get  into  an  electric  tram-car, 
or  to  walk  across  the  lines  of  light  railways,  and  how 
much  more  agreeable  !     Besides,  the  brigands  would 
not  hurt  me  ;  they  would  know  I  should  be  worth 
money  ;  they  would  even,  perhaps,  leave  me  my  clothes 
and  give  me  smoked  kid  and  smuggled  cigars.     But 
the  trains  and  the  trams  are  democratic  institutions : 
they  would  crush  me  as  impartially  as  they  crush 
counterjumpers  or  bankers'  clerks.' 

*  You  always  jest,'  grumbled  Theo.     He  himself 
never  jested  :  it  was  said  that  he  had    never    even 
played  in  his  nursery  days  except  with  tin  soldiers. 

Between  him  and  Othyris  militarism  was  built  up 
like  a  stone  wall. 


74  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

No  conscript,  sweating  in  a  forced  march  under 
the  weight  of  arms  and  knapsack,  hated  the  military 
service  as  the  second  son  of  the  King  hated  and 
despised  it.  He  wrote  some  poems  which  were  called 
1  Dum  spiro,  suspiro  ' ;  they  were  sent  anonymously 
to  an  independent  journal,  and  caused  much  wonder 
and  comment ;  they  caused,  too,  the  sequestration  of 
the  newspaper  at  the  issue  of  the  fifth  poem.  As  he 
kept  his  own  confidence,  nobody  betrayed  him,  and 
when  the  editor  received  a  bank-note  for  double  the 
amount  of  the  fine  imposed  on  him,  he  was  too  wise 
to  try  to  find  out  who  was  the  sender. 

Not  less  burdensome  than  the  military  obligations 
was  the  possibility  that  any  day,  any  year,  he  might 
be  called  to  occupy  the  throne.  The  Crown  Prince 
was  a  sportsman,  untiring  and  reckless ;  there  was 
always  the  chance  of  some  violence  cutting  short  his 
life,  for  he  was  brave  to  fool-hardiness.  When  he 
did  think  of  this  very  possible  contingency,  the  Heir- 
Presumptive  to  the  crown  shrank  as  from  a  far  greater 
calamity  than  death. 

Othyris  had  no  dreams  or  vanities  to  console  him. 
He  knew  that  kings  who  refuse  to  accept  the  illusions 
which  surround  them  from  their  birth  are  of  all  mortals 
the  most  miserable;  that  for  them,  beyond  all  men, 
to  issue  from  the  web  of  existing  circumstance  is 
impossible. 

He  would  have  renounced  his  place  in  the  succession 
without  hesitation,  had  not  the  man  who  would  come 
after  him  been  a  worthless  scamp.  Who  could,  with 
any  conscience  or  sense  of  human  responsibility, 
deliver  a  nation  into  such  hands  as  those  of  Tyras  ? 
His  own,  he  knew,  were  weak,  but  at  least  they  were 
clean.  He  did  not  believe  that  he  would  be  able  to  do 


iv  HELIANTHUS  75 

any  good  if  he  became  king,  because  vested  interests 
would  be  stronger  than  he.  Ministers  would  thwart, 
courtiers  conspire,  women  intrigue ;  when  he  would 
desire  to  bless  he  would  be  forced  to  curse  ;  between 
him  and  the  people  there  would  be  always  the  mis- 
representations of  the  Press,  or  that  gross  flattery 
which  defiles  more  than  its  abuse.  He  had  no 
illusions ;  he  was  no  Hercules  that  he  would  be 
able  to  slay  the  Hydra;  instead,  the  Hydra  would 
stifle  him  in  feigning  to  embrace  him.  Yet  he  felt 
that  he  could  not  in  common  courage  and  decency 
pass  the  crown  to  such  a  one  as  the  man  whose  nick- 
name was  Gavroche.  Nor  could  he  ever  do  as  he 
would  have  liked  to  do,  should  he  ever  succeed  to  the 
throne,  —  abolish  the  constitution  and  the  monarchy, 
and  change  the  country  into  a  republic  based  not  on 
transatlantic  but  on  ancient  precedent.  His  brothers 
would  most  certainly  take  up  arms  against  him  in 
such  an  event ;  there  would  be  civil  war  in  the 
streets,  and  in  the  provinces  the  land  would  be 
delivered  over  to  all  the  furies.  To  let  Hell  loose 
in  such  a  manner  would  not  be  a  thing  to  be  thought 
of  for  a  moment.  Therefore  if  called  to  the  succession 
he  would  be  compelled  by  circumstance  to  enter,  and 
remain  in,  the  groove  which  he  abhorred,  to  sacrifice 
his  existence  to  formula,  to  ceremony,  to  vain  pomp, 
and  to  silly  shibboleth.  A  friend  had  once  said  to 
him,  '  Make  your  personality  felt.'  But  he  knew, 
he  who  had  been  born  and  reared  in  a  Court,  that 
around  every  prince,  every  monarch,  there  are  in- 
fluences far  stronger  than  his  own,  which  paralyse  his 
influence,  intercept  its  action,  and  transmute  its  power 
into  impotence  wherever,  however,  it  may  cross  and 
menace  established  claims,  precedents,  rights,  privi- 
leges, conventionalities,  and  customs.  » 


76  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

He  knew  that  the  Ministers  who  would  kneel  to 
him  would  be  his  masters,  that  their  shadows  would 
be  always  between  him  and  the  people  ;  that,  change 
them  as  he  might,  they  would  be  of  the  same  eternal 
type  :  their  religion,  office;  their  evangel,  a  tax-paper. 
He  would  be  no  more  able  to  alter  the  poverty,  the 
injustice,  the  agonies  of  human  life  in  his  kingdom 
than  any  peasant  who  dragged  bare  limbs  over 
scorched  sods  in  the  wake  of  the  ploughshare. 
Individual  charity  he  might  give,  individual  lots  he 
might  alleviate ;  but  to  the  vast  mass  of  hopeless 
misery  he  would  be  able  to  give  no  comfort.  The 
great  engines  of  torture,  the  great  grindstones  of 
pressure,  militarism,  commerce,  taxation,  cheap  labour, 
the  dropsy  of  capital,  the  exploitation  of  misery  ;  all 
these,  and  all  the  ills  which  they  engender,  he 
would  be  no  more  able  to  touch  than  if  he  were  a 
stevedore  labouring  in  the  hold  of  a  steamship  in  the 
harbour.  The  makers  of  phrases,  the  grinders  of 
souls,  the  drivers  of  hunger,  would  always  be  stronger 
than  he.  They  would  leave  his  multitudes  in  the 
death-pits,  on  the  battlefields,  in  the  dens  of  the 
sweaters,  in  the  black  tunnels  of  the  mines,  in  the 
stricken,  blighted  fields,  in  the  huts  without  light,  or 
fire,  or  food ;  and  he  would  be  powerless  to  rescue 
those  who  would  be  called  his  people. 

The  contrast  between  a  monarch's  semblance  of 
dominion  and  his  absolute  impotence  in  reality,  seemed 
to  him  the  most  cruel  and  cynical  antithesis  the  world 
contained.  His  father  was  content  with  the  only  real 
power  which  royalty  confers  on  royalty — the  power  of 
gathering  riches,  and  placing  them  in  safety  out  of 
reach  of  evil  chance  ;  but  he  would  not  be  so  content. 
Nor  would  the  lesser  privileges  of  authority  satisfy 


iv  HELIANTHUS  77 

him  without  the  power  to  alter  laws,  to  divide  capital, 
to  reconstruct  society,  to  humanise  criminal  punish- 
ment, to  guide  the  people  to  the  light  as  it  was  visible 
to  him  ;  and  what  king  could  do  aught  of  this  ? 
Nay,  in  modern  life,  could  Krishna,  or  Christ,  or 
Mahomet,  do  it  ? 

Even  in  the  affairs  of  daily  life  he  was  constantly 
met  and  checked  by  an  absolute  powerlessness  to 
do  what  he  desired  for  the  welfare  of  the  people. 
Money  he  could  give,  and  did  give ;  but  there  are 
evils  and  sorrows  which  money,  magician  though  it 
be,  cannot  cure.  If  you  give  money  you  create  a 
proletariate  amongst  the  poor,  and  a  crowd  of  toadies 
amongst  those  whose  god  it  is  ;  and  you  can  only 
give ;  you  cannot  ensure,  or  even  control,  the  effects 
of  your  gift.  He  knew  that  well.  He  could  alleviate 
physical  ills  indeed,  but  he  could  not  alter  moral  ills. 
He  could  not  follow  the  course  of  his  gifts  any  more 
than  a  florist  can  follow  the  fate  of  flowers  he  cuts 
and  sends  away  to  strangers.  There  was  no  Poor 
Law  in  the  country  to  diminish,  however  feebly,  the 
suffering  of  the  poor.  There  was  only  the  tax  of 
the  State  on  the  youth  of  the  State :  the  hateful  and 
almost  universal  law  of  conscription  which  seized 
from  two  to  three  years  from  the  life  of  nearly  every 
young  man  born  in  the  kingdom.  He  felt  this 
most  acutely  when  the  lads  on  his  own  estates  were 
taken;  he  could  not  save  them,  he  could  not 
ask  for  any  exemption  for  them ;  and  they  who 
believed  in  his  omnipotence  supposed  that  he  would 
not  help  them  because  he  thought  the  blood-tax  just 
and  righteous.  He  loathed  it,  but  he  could  no  more 
change  it  than  he  could  have  moved  the  range  of  the 
Rhaetian  Mountains.  If  ever  he  reigned,  would  the 


78  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

political  parties  permit  him  to  abolish  compulsory 
military  service  ?  He  had  no  hope  of  it.  The 
populace  would  have  rejoiced  if  the  weight  of  arms 
had  been  lifted  off  their  sons'  shoulders ;  but  the 
ruling  classes  would  never  have  allowed  a  voluntary 
and  paid  force  to  be  substituted  for  the  conscripts  so 
numerous,  and,  by  comparison,  so  cheap.  Europe 
has  swept  her  youth  into  the  dragon's  maw  of 
militarism  and  is  not  inclined  to  let  them  escape. 
War  is  the  plaything  of  governments.  They  are 
not  likely  to  give  it  up  merely  because  the  playthings 
get  broken. 

The  favourite  place  of  his  uncle  Basil  had  been  the 
great  estate  called  ^nothrea,  which  lay  on  the  south- 
west coast  of  Helianthus  and  which  was  as  nearly  an 
earthly  paradise  as  nature  and  art,  land  and  sea,  un- 
limited wealth  and  perfect  taste,  could  make  it.  Its 
views  were  incomparable,  its  treasures  were  endless, 
its  gardens  were  dreams  of  loveliness ;  and  from  its 
terraces  the  Mare  Magnum  was  seen  to  unroll  its 
mighty  waters,  an  azure  plain  when  summer  smiled, 
a  chaos  of  storm  and  wind  and  mountainous  waves, 
and  vessels  tossed  to  and  fro  like  cockle-shells  in  its 
mad  riot,  when  the  clouds  touched  its  purple. 

Othyris  loved  the  place  with  an  artist's  passion  for 
its  beauty,  and  with  the  gratitude  for  its  solitude  of 
one  who  would  willingly  have  been  a  recluse  if  life 
had  so  permitted.  He  would  gladly  have  exiled 
himself  for  ever  to  ^Lnothrea  and  there  have  dwelt, 
leaving  the  clash  and  clangour  of  the  world  to  others. 

There  are  so  many  of  these  beautiful  places,  lying 
in  the  lap  of  the  world  like  jewels  on  a  woman's 
breast,  and  how  seldom  —  how  little  —  do  those  who 
possess  them  care  for  them  !  They  may  care  for  them 


iv  HELIANTHUS  79 

with  the  pride  of  possession,  care  with  the  vanity  of 
wealth,  care  with  the  sense  of  the  owner's  omnipo- 
tence, with  the  appreciation  of  cultivated  taste,  with 
the  power  and  pomp  of  hospitality  ;  but  care  for  them 
with  the  love  of  the  heart  for  the  home  they  do  not, 
for  they  leave  them  frequently  ;  when  forced  to  stay 
in  them  they  are  soon  aweary ;  all  their  glories  for 
the  sight,  all  their  treasures  for  the  mind,  soon  pall  on 
them.  If  it  were  not  for  the  charm  of  sport  which 
their  coverts  offer,  their  owners  would  not  sleep  as 
often  as  they  do  beneath  their  roofs  !  They  prefer 
the  express-trains,  the  transatlantic  steamers,  the 
fashionable  spa,  the  crowded  hotel,  the  gorgeous 
gambling-place,  and  even  other  people's  roof-trees 
to  their  own  !  And  the  grand  houses  are  left  to 
solitude  and  servants,  sometimes  even  are  let  to 
strangers,  sometimes  are  opened  to  entertain  royalty 
and  provide  some  great  prince  with  whatever  sport 
he  likes  the  best ;  and  that  is  all,  until,  perchance, 
some  day  the  owner  of  one  of  them  is  embarrassed 
in  his  affairs,  and  sells —  last  ignominy  of  all ! 

./Enothrea  was  safe  from  such  a  fate ;  but  it  was, 
perforce,  visited  too  little  by  its  lord,  who  would  so 
willingly  have  passed  all  his  days  under  its  roof. 
The  chain  of  the  social,  military,  filial  duties  which 
bound  Othyris  to  a  routine  so  hateful  to  him  rendered 
most  of  his  time  as  heavy  to  him  as  the  daily  labour 
of  any  poor  man  could  be.  Even  when  on  his 
estates  he  had  seldom  the  luxury  of  solitude,  and  as 
he  regarded  these  vast  properties  as  what  Tyras 
called  in  ridicule  une  charge  (fames,  the  welfare  of 
them  was  to  him  a  grave  preoccupation. 

Une  charge  d'ames !  Well,  was  it  not  so  ? 
Was  not  the  sole  excuse  for  power  and  possession 


8o  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

the  use  of  them  in  behalf  of  those  who  had  neither  ? 
His  family  thought  such  a  view  of  rank  and  pro- 
perty a  monstrous  compound  of  communism  and 
conceit,  but  his  conscience  held  to  it. 

Only  he  could  do  so  little  which  satisfied  himself; 
he  was  always  stopped  in  his  actions  by  some  of  the 
wire  fences  of  law  or  usage,  some  of  the  immovable 
rocks  of  prejudice  or  regulation.  One  day  as  he 
walked  down  one  of  the  beautiful  avenues  at  JEno- 
threa,  an  avenue  of  great  ilex-trees  which  met  in 
impenetrable  darkness  overhead  and  were  bordered 
by  those  humble  and  hardy  flowers  which  he  cher- 
ished more  than  all  the  glories  of  horticulture,  he 
came  across  a  boy  who  was  employed  on  the  estate. 
He  was  a  pretty  lad,  with  an  innocent  face  and  a 
classic  form ;  the  tears  were  falling  down  his  cheeks, 
and  as  he  stood  aside  bareheaded  to  let  Othyris 
pass  a  sob  heaved  his  chest. 

*  Why,   my   boy,  what    ails  you  ? '   asked    Elim, 
knowing    the    lad    by    name    and    sight.       *  Come, 
Eusebius,    do    not    be   shy    of  me ;    tell    me    your 
sorrow.' 

The  boy  looked  up  wistfully. 

*  Sir,    oh,    sir,'    he    murmured,  f  I     drew    a     bad 
number  yesterday.      I  must  serve  ! ' 

*  Ah  !     Is  that  your  trouble  ?  '  said  Othyris,  under- 
standing only  too  well.     The  boy  was  bound  to  go  to 
military    service ;    very    few,  indeed,  in   the    rigour 
of  his    father's    reign,   escaped    the    iron    yoke    of 
conscription. 

c  Alas !  my  poor  child,  I  can  do  nothing  for  you. 
It  is  the  law.  You  must  obey  it.' 

Eusebius  looked  up  timidly,  his  cheeks  wet  with 
tears. 


iv  HELIANTHUS  81 

'  Oh,  sir,  oh,  my  gracious  lord,'  he  murmured, 
1  could  you  not  say  a  word  for  me  ?  The  others  — 
my  brothers  —  are  all  so  little.  They  earn  nothing, 
and  my  father  has  been  ten  months  helpless  since  he 
broke  his  arm,  the  bones  do  not  join  well ' 

Then,  frightened  at  having  dared  to  speak  so 
much,  he  broke  down  into  uncontrollable  weeping, 
and  covered  his  face  with  his  hands. 

*  I  know,  I  know  ! '  said  Elim.  He  knew  only  too 
well  these  sorrows  that  were  all  over  the  land,  that 
overshadowed  the  lives  of  the  young  from  their 
birth,  and  made  bitter  as  gall  the  rough,  black  bread 
eaten  by  the  hearths  of  the  poor. 

'  Oh,  sir,  your  Highness  is  so  mighty  in  power.  If 

only  —  if  only '  murmured  the  boy,  trembling  in 

every  limb  with  hope  and  fear.  To  him  it  seemed  if 
only  the  lord  of  ./Enothrea  would  speak  but  a  word, 
they  would  let  him  stay  in  his  little  home  amongst 
the  wide  green  fields  and  fragrant  woodlands  where 
he  had  been  born. 

But  Othyris  knew  otherwise.  c  They  found  you 
healthy  and  well  made  ? '  he  said.  *  They  have 
passed  you  as  fitted  for  service  ? ' 

<  Yes,  sir.' 

(  Then,  my  lad,  no  power  of  mine  can  do  anything 
for  you.'  And  he  thought  bitterly  :  '  It  is  the  best 
fruit  that  is  first  plucked ;  it  is  the  soundest  lamb 
that  is  sent  first  to  the  slaughter ! ' 

4  Believe  me,  my  boy,'  he  said  with  great  gentle- 
ness, cif  it  were  possible  for  me  to  help  you,  I  would 
do  so  unasked.  But  in  some  things  I  am  entirely 
powerless,  and  this  is  one  of  them.  What  I  can  do 
is  to  see  that  your  family  does  not  suffer  in  your 
absence,  and  that  your  wages  are  paid  to  your  father 


82  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

during  your  absence  on  military  service  as  though 
you  were  still  in  these  gardens.  That  is  all  I  can  do. 
For  the  rest,  take  courage,  my  child.  When  you 
come  back  your  place  will  await  you.' 

Then  he  went  on  his  way  down  the  avenue,  and 
his  heart  was  heavy  for  the  weeping  lad.  Could  he 
have  had  his  way  none  of  this  young  flesh  would 
have  been  eaten  by  the  dragon  of  war. 

He  knew  how  the  enforced  military  service  took 
the  elasticity  out  of  youth  as  the  slip  and  chain  cow 
the  young  dog ;  how  it  made  coarse  and  harsh  and 
evil  those  whom  it  did  not  make  miserable  ;  how  as  it 
hardened  the  hands  and  callosities  on  the  feet,  so  it 
blunted  the  sensibilities,  killed  the  individuality,  and 
reduced  the  man  to  a  machine. 

This  boy  was  good,  simple,  dutiful,  affectionate, 
ignorant  of  much  of  the  vice  and  the  sin  of  cities. 
He  would  go  to  the  barracks,  to  the  camp,  to  the 
chamber  with  its  rows  of  straw  or  of  sacking  for 
beds,  to  the  drinking  booth  and  the  brothel ;  and  the 
long  forced  marches,  and  the  constant  gnawing  of 
hunger,  and  the  dreary  empty  hours  without  either 
work  or  play,  and  the  coarse  and  brutal  bullying  of 
corporal  and  of  comrade  would  be  his  portion  for  ten 
long  seasons,  and  they  would  make  him  weary  and 
sullen,  and  he  would  get  drunk  whenever  he  could. 

There  was  no  help  for  it.  Othyris  might 
have  tried  to  bear  the  world  upon  his  shoulders 
with  as  much  chance  of  success  as  to  change  the 
military  tyrannies  of  Europe. 

But  as  he  walked  through  the  soft  green  shadows 
of  the  avenue  he  seemed  to  hear  the  dragging  of  the 
young  tired  feet  through  the  dust  over  the  stones,  the 
heaving  of  the  strained  lungs  under  the  heavy  leathern 


iv  HELIANTHUS  83 

belts,  the  pressure  of  the  blood  on  the  valves  of  the 
heart  in  the  panting  march  in  the  noonday  sun  ;  —  for 
many  a  long  year  the  sons  of  Helianthus  had  gone 
thus  over  its  earth,  under  its  hills,  beside  its  waters, 
and  none  had  pitied  them.  The  weakest  had  always 
dropped  out  of  line,  and  sunk  down  on  the  soil,  and 
swooned  or  died  there. 

Who  had  cared  ?  No  one,  except  the  wolves  and 
wild  dogs  who  had  stolen  over  the  sand-hills,  or 
through  the  cistus  bushes,  and  waited. 


CHAPTER  V 

His  EXCELLENCY  ALEXANDER  DELIORNIS,  Minister 
of  Grace  and  Justice  in  Helianthus,  had  been  in  early 
life  a  rag-merchant.  He  had  made  a  considerable 
fortune  in  that  unsavoury  trade,  and  had  entered  on 
the  not  much  cleaner  trade  of  politics  as  one  of  the 
conservative  deputies  of  his  native  seaport  town,  in 
whose  harbours  innumerable  crafts,  of  all  kinds  of 
construction  and  degrees  of  tonnage,  and  coming 
from  all  manner  of  countries,  brought  to  his  yards 
the  rags  of  innumerable  filthy  multitudes  which, 
when  Helianthus  was  healthy  and  medical  science 
was  out  of  work,  could  always  afford  to  its  professors 
the  germs  of  diseases  wherewith  to  create  a  useful  and 
profitable  scare.  Deliornis  and  the  medical  scientists 
had  had  many  transactions ;  his  warehouses,  become 
in  later  years  vast  buildings  on  the  quays,  were  not 
dear  to  the  goddess  Hygeia ;  they  had  not  a  sweet 
fragrance  as  of  the  rose ;  indeed,  they  stank  in  the 
nostrils  of  the  city,  and  of  those  who  landed  and 
embarked  at  its  port.  Hygeia  frowned  on  them ; 
but  the  high  priests  of  science  hurried  to  the  rescue 
with  sulphates  and  sublimates,  and  they  and  Deliornis 
agreed  that  the  rags  were,  if  not  inodorous,  innocuous. 
The  rags  stank  on  undisturbed,  and  the  useful 
process  of  turning  them  into  gold  continued  un- 

84 


CHAP,  v  HELIANTHUS  85 

molested;  Science,  and  the  Municipality,  and  Deliornis 
were  all  satisfied ;  and  if  Hygeia  continued  to  pout, 
well,  she  is,  we  know,  but  a  minor  divinity,  and 
Pluto  dislikes  her,  because  she  thins  the  crowds  that 
pass  the  Styx. 

Now,  the  priests  and  augurs  of  Mammon  are 
numerous  in  the  Senate  and  Chamber  of  Helianthus  ; 
they  may  be  said  to  swarm  there,  like  flies  in  a 
sugar-barrel ;  they  are  to  be  found  even  in  under- 
secretaryships  of  State,  and  now  and  then  one  or 
other  of  them  becomes  a  full-blown  Minister,  being 
given,  of  course,  some  Department  of  which  he  knows 
absolutely  nothing,  this  condition  being  an  essential 
rule  in  the  formation  of  all  modern  governments. 
Therefore  when  Deliornis  went  to  the  Chamber,  he 
found  on  the  benches  of  his  party  various  friends 
of  his  friends,  and  they  pushed  him  with  zeal  and 
kindness  up  the  rungs  of  the  ladder  of  political 
success ;  for  the  manner  in  which  he  had  behaved 
about  his  warehouses  had  shown  that  he  possessed 
the  making  of  an  ideal  public  servant.  He  was 
intelligent,  supple,  pliant  in  form,  tenacious  in  fact, 
adroit  in  speech,  unburdened  by  prejudice  or  principle. 
He  mounted  easily  from  minor  to  major  positions, 
and,  whenever  the  aristocratic  and  conservative  party 
was  in  power,  it  could  not  afford  to  pass  him  over 
with  neglect.  Delicate  nostrils  quivered  sometimes, 
detecting  the  smell  of  the  rags  on  his  gold-laced 
coat;  but  that,  of  course,  was  mere  fancy  on  the 
part  of  fastidious  people  who  did  not  appreciate 
industry. 

Deliornis  was  King  John's  ideal  of  a  Minister,  and 
the  odour  of  the  rag  warehouse  did  not  irritate  the 
royal  nostrils  as  it  did  those  of  some  fastidious  persons, 


86  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

who  believed  that  it  could  not  be  got  rid  of  by  means 
of  wearing  a  broad  sash  ribbon  across  the  chest,  or  a 
collar  like  a  prize  dog's  at  the  throat.  To  the 
King,  Deliornis  appeared  absolutely  devoted  to  the 
royal  House;  without  any  initiative,  or  opinions, 
except  such  as  were  suggested  from  above,  i.e.  by 
Providence,  by  Princes,  or  by  the  Conservative  Press 
—  a  triad  which  is  always  working  in  common  for  the 
general  good  of  nations  and  humanity.  He  was 
a  fluent  speaker,  an  adroit  eater  of  his  own  words 
when  desirable,  and  no  one  was  better  able  to 
float  a  scheme  for  public  works,  or  an  addition 
to  the  public  debt,  and  persuade  an  unwilling 
and  sullen  Chamber  to  vote  a  measure  unwelcome 
to  the  country,  but  dear  to  the  Palace  and  the 
Bourse. 

Deliornis,  his  personality  masked  by  the  names  of 
relatives,  had  placed  much  of  his  gold  obtained  from 
rags  in  international,  or  national,  companies,  for  the 
most  part  manufacturers  of  destructive  engines  or  of 
destructive  chemicals.  Before  his  present  elevation 
to  the  rank  of  a  Cabinet  Minister,  he  had  been 
Under-Secretary  for  Naval  Affairs;  and  as  the  present 
Minister  of  Marine  was  a  cousin  of  his  own,  they 
could,  with  pleasant  agreement,  furnish  largely  all  kinds 
of  murderous  substances  to  the  fleet ;  and,  indeed,  the 
cousin,  being  a  man  of  talent,  provided  the  maritime 
ports  and  dockyard  depots  so  largely  with  these  that 
there  would  be  no  space  for  his  successors,  when  they 
came,  to  stick  in  a  single  shell.  New  inventions  were, 
indeed,  spoken  of,  which  were  being  discussed  and 
perfected ;  but,  if  it  eventually  became  necessary  to 
adopt  them,  the  present  enormous  stores  could 
always  be  sold  to  small  and  distant  nations,  and  fresh 


v  HELIANTHUS  87 

purchases  made  in  the  name  of  the  Helianthine 
people;  for  this  is  statecraft  as  understood  in  the 
present  days  by  professional  politicians.  To  buy 
and  sell  at  a  profit  has  passed  from  the  tradesman's 
desk  to  the  statesman's  portfolio,  as  the  first  of  all 
commandments. 

The  cousin,  also,  having  begun  life  as  a  clerk  at  a 
county  court  at  a  town  in  a  hill  district,  and  from 
that  office  having  advanced  to  a  chair  of  political 
economy  at  an  university,  knew  considerably  less 
about  the  water  and  the  vessels  which  float  thereon 
than  any  crab  which  sits  in  a  rock-pool  and  sees  the 
white  sails,  and  the  black  smoke,  pass  in  the  distance. 
Therefore  in  the  true  spirit  of  a  monarchical  de- 
mocracy he  was  considered  of  all  men  eligible  as  a 
Minister  of  Marine;  and  the  battleships  built  under 
his  orders  and  auspices  were  certain  to  topple  head 
over  heels  at  the  first  squall  at  sea,  and  sink  like  a 
stone ;  as  well-behaved  battleships,  with  a  due  con- 
sciousness of  the  anxiety  of  their  constructors  to 
begin  building  anew,  always  do  in  all  oceans,  seas, 
shoals,  and  channels,  in  both  hemispheres.  The 
shark,  the  octopus,  the  narwhal,  amongst  whose 
pleasant  company  their  unhappy  crews  descend  in 
the  twilight  of  deep  salt-water,  are  children  in  the 
art  of  acquisition  compared  to  the  dual  entity  of 
Cabinet  Minister  and  public  contractor. 

Something  of  these  methods  was  undoubtedly 
known  to  King  John,  though  not  all,  nor  even  a 
tenth  part;  for  no  monarch,  dwelling  as  monarchs 
do  in  hothouses,  seeing  only  the  prize  plants  ad- 
mitted there,  can  match  in  shrewdness  a  hard-headed 
tradesman,  accustomed  to  contend  with  all  sorts  and 
conditions  of  people,  and  possessing  a  smart  tongue, 


88  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

a  pliant  spine,  and  a  brain  accustomed  to  deals  and 
markets  and  all  the  variations  of  speculation.  The 
shrewdness  of  the  tradesman  is  not  the  finesse  of  the 
statesman,  and  is  apt  to  resemble  the  bull  in  the  china- 
shop  when  it  gets  among  delicate  questions  and  intri- 
cate diplomacies ;  but  in  its  own  interests  and  in  its 
own  sphere  it  always  remains  the  master  of  men  who, 
whatever  else  may  be  their  faults,  have  the  hamper- 
ing scruples  of  gentlemen. 

The  commercial  man,  the  buyer  and  seller,  the 
speculator  on  'Change,  the  manufacturer,  the  intelli- 
gent dealer  in  skins,  or  manures,  or  chemicals,  can- 
not make  a  safe  diplomatist  towards  the  middle,  or 
close,  of  a  life  spent  in  other  pursuits.  Between  the 
professional  or  commercial  mind  and  manner,  and  the 
diplomatic  mind  and  manner,  there  flow  vast  impas- 
sable streams  of  rose-water  and  aromatic  vinegar. 

But  a  successful  Minister  he  can  make;  we  see 
him  on  the  ministerial  benches  of  all  the  Parliaments 
of  the  world,  and  he  has  one  superiority  over  better- 
bred  men :  he  takes  toflunkeyismas  naturally  as  ducks 
to  water.  His  spine,  long  bent  before  rich  men, 
doubles  in  two  before  a  royal  presence ;  and  for 
this  attribute  he  is  admitted  to  palaces.  For  this 
reason  Deliornis  had  become  a  persona  grata  at  the 
Soleia ;  he  agreed  with  everything,  he  professed  to 
see  profound  reason  in  what  was  foolishness,  and 
profound  insight  in  what  was  oblique  vision  ;  he  was 
really  penetrated  by  gratitude  when  he  was  treated 
with  cordiality  by  his  Princes,  and  felt  a  thrill  of 
pride  run  down  his  spine  whenever  the  royal  hand 
touched  his  own  in  greeting  or  valediction.  In  the 
Palace  he  was  considered  to  be  of  a  right  and  rever- 
end spirit,  of  remarkably  good  manners  considering 


v  HELIANTHUS  89 

his  origin,  and  of  a  docile  and  humble  temper,  infi- 
nitely rare,  and  as  infinitely  becoming. 

Before  the  year  was  aged  and  its  first  frosts  were 
felt  on  the  wide  Guthonic  plains,  King  John  went,  as 
in  etiquette  bound,  to  return  the  visit  of  his  nephew 
Julius,  with  a  pomp  and  a  costliness  which  contrasted 
unpleasantly,  in  the  minds  of  those  persons  who  were 
hard  to  please,  with  the  necessity  which  the  Ex- 
chequer was  under,  of  grinding  the  souls  and  bodies 
of  the  general  public  between  the  mill-stones  of  fiscal 
extortion.  A  royal  progress  is  still  a  very  costly 
thing,  although  no  cloth  of  gold  and  pourpoint  of 
satin  and  collar  of  lace  and  corselet  of  jewels  are  worn, 
although  all  the  stately  and  decorative  figures  of  old 
are  represented  by  figures  totally  undistinguishable, 
when  travelling,  from  commercial  clerks  or  shop- 
assistants  out  for  a  holiday  at  any  seaside  or  river- 
side haunt.  John  of  Gunderode,  in  a  drab-coloured 
great  coat  and  a  tweed  travelling  cap,  walked  through 
the  banks  of  palms  and  flowers  with  which  the  rail- 
way station  of  the  northern  line  was  decorated,  and 
over  the  carpet  which  it  is  etiquette  to  spread 
wherever  royal  feet  may  tread  ;  said  a  few  words  un- 
graciously with  his  Ministers,  with  the  Prefect,  the 
Syndic,  and  other  big  officials  ;  then  gave  them  two 
fingers  in  farewell,  and  stepped  into  his  saloon-car- 
riage, accompanied  by  his  son  Idumaea,  and  lighted  a 
huge  cheroot. 

Every  device  which  modern  luxury  could  devise 
had  been  lavished  on  the  royal  train.  Its  upholstery 
was  fit  for  a  young  beauty's  boudoir,  well-known 
artists  had  painted  its  panels  with  charming  groups, 
sculptors  had  designed  its  caryatides  and  its  ceilings, 


9o  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

its  temperature  was  carefully  regulated,  and  its  atmo- 
sphere was  delicately  tinted  to  a  soft  rose  hue ;  and 
King  John  smoked  and  slept  and  snored,  and  ate 
and  drank,  and  was  borne  through  meridional  and 
central  Europe  as  swiftly  and  agreeably  as  though 
he  were  a  necromancer  sailing  through  the  air  on  a 
magic  carpet. 

His  Excellency  Alexander  Deliornis  had  been 
chosen  to  accompany  the  King  on  this  official  visit, 
and  he  was  exceedingly  elated  ;  he  would,  he  knew, 
get  some  great  Order  from  the  Emperor,  and  the 
visit  would  set  him  firmly  in  his  ministerial  saddle, 
on  which  he  felt  at  times  the  unsteadiness  of  a  man 
who  has  been  sent  to  the  riding-school  too  late  in  life. 

The  Prime  Minister,  Kantakuzene,  ought  to  have 
gone,  and  ought  to  have  got  the  Order,  but  his  re- 
publican antecedents  made  him  a  person  disagreeable 
to  the  Emperor  of  the  Guthones  ;  whereas  Deliornis, 
although  he  had  sold  rags,  had  never  shown  any 
tenderness  to  the  classes  by  whom  rags  are  worn. 
Like  their  rags,  they  stank  in  his  nostrils. 

With  a  stephanotis  in  his  buttonhole,  and  a  grati- 
fied smile  upon  his  round,  red,  full  face,  the  chiffonnier 
en  gros,  as  Tyras  called  him,  awaited  his  sovereign 
on  the  station  platform,  and  followed  him  with 
nimble  humility  into  the  royal  carriage.  These  are 
the  hours  in  a  politician's  life  which  compensate  to 
him  for  all  the  browbeating  in  Parliament,  the 
heckling  in  the  Cabinet,  the  endless  stream  of  appli- 
cants pouring  in  and  out  of  his  antechamber,  the 
turning  of  his  coat  in  the  sight  of  the  public,  the  in- 
cessant existence  of  attack  and  retreat,  of  defence 
and  defiance,  of  asseveration  and  apology,  which 
make  up  a  political  career  in  Helianthus. 


HELIANTHUS 


91 


Probably  no  one  enjoys  ministerial  greatness  so 
thoroughly  as  an  arrive  who  has  been  very  low  down 
in  the  social  scale.  All  the  fuss  and  form  and  cere- 
mony attendant  on  it  bore  the  aristocrat,  offend  the 
taste  of  the  gentleman,  but  delight  the  newly  arrived  ; 
the  bowing  magistrates,  the  robed  and  gilded  mayors, 
the  staring  crowds,  the  resounding  bands,  the  verbose 
greetings,  the  decorated  platforms,  the  gigantic  feasts, 

—  all  these  enchant  the  man  who  has  risen  from  the 
office-stool  to  the  Cabinet  Council ;   to  no  other  is 
the  red  carpet  so  roseate,  or  the  broad  breast-ribbon 
so  dear,  or  the  roar  of  the  cheering  such  heavenly 
music. 

The  royal  train  had  cost  some  three  million  of 
francs;  each  voyage  which  it  made  cost  another  million; 
and  King  John's  visit  to  the  empire  of  his  nephew 
would  cost  several  further  millions;  and  both  in  his 
own  country  and  in  that  of  Julius,  bundles  of  cut  grass 
and  a  handful  of  hens'  eggs  were  taxed  at  all  the 
town  gates,  and  both  peoples  paid  a  hearth  tax,  though 
many  of  their  hearths  were  cold.  What  had  the  cost 
of  his  train,  and  the  tax  at  the  gates,  or  the  tax  on 
the  hearths,  to  do  one  with  another,  each  of  these 
potentates  would  have  asked  in  amazement  if  any  one 
had  had  the  hardihood  to  draw  in  his  hearing  such 
an  insufferable  comparison. 

But  from  the  insolence  of  such  parallels  monarchs 
are  carefully  screened. 

Royal  visits  have  this  disadvantage,  that  if  for 
any  cause  —  a  hostile  Press,  a  political  rancour,  or 
an  individual  apprehension  on  the  part  of  the  guest 

—  the  exchange  of  these  courtesies  be  considered  un- 
wise or  ill-timed,  their  abandonment  causes  friction, 
and  creates  bad  feelings  between  the  nations  involved, 


92  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

even  as  cards  not  returned,  or  invitations  not  accepted, 
make  enemies  in  society  of  those  who  hitherto  have 
been  on  terms  of  amity.  It  is  easy  to  produce  anger ; 
it  is  difficult  to  allay  it ;  and  to  efface  the  recollection 
of  it  is  almost  impossible,  even  with  that  giddy  thing 
— a  national  susceptibility.  The  kisses  of  Henry  and 
Francis  on  the  Field  of  the  Cloth  of  Gold  were  soon 
forgotten ;  the  loss  of  Calais  and  the  day  of  Pavia 
rankled  in  Tudor  and  in  Valois  souls  through 
centuries. 

The  emotions  of  nations  are  like  mercury  in  a 
glass  tube  :  they  rise  and  fall  with  incredible  rapidity. 
Both  finance  and  journalism  want  the  quicksilver  to 
dance  up  and  down,  or  their  own  occupation  would 
be  gone ;  so  the  cold  hand  or  the  hot  hand  presses 
the  tube  by  turns.  Every  one  wants  the  temper- 
ature which  suits  himself,  and  very  naturally  does 
his  best  to  produce  it. 

King  John  slept  and  smoked,  lunched  and  dined, 
bathed  and  dressed,  and  was  whirled  through  prov- 
inces and  countries  with  scarcely  perceptible  move- 
ment though  lightning-like  rapidity.  Now  and  then 
he  looked  out  of  a  window,  and  saw  long  lines  of  dark, 
forlorn  figures  stooping  over  dark,  stony  lands,  or 
groups  of  factories  under  clouds  of  black  and  lurid 
smoke,  or  sluggish  grey  canals  with  barges  creeping 
slowly  through  their  slime ;  but  they  had  no  interest 
for  him.  The  only  sight  which  interested  him 
was  when  in  a  railway  siding,  waiting  for  his  train 
to  pass,  he  saw  a  military  train  close  packed  with 
soldiers  and  horses,  or  a  crowd  of  conscripts  huddled 
together  on  a  station  platform,  or  a  squadron  of 
cavalry  trotting  smartly  over  the  dust  of  a  country 
road. 


v  HELIANTHUS  93 

They  were  the  soldiers,  the  horses,  the  con- 
scripts, the  cavalry,  of  the  various  States  which 
acknowledged  the  suzerainty  of  his  beloved  nephew 
and  ally  —  the  nephew  of  whom  he  was  never  sure, 
the  ally  who  would  one  day  swallow  up  him  and  his, 
if  it  were  possible  to  do  so,  by  the  one  law  of  which 
he  would  be  unable  to  dispute  the  justice :  the  law 
of  superior  strength. 

When  the  monarch  entered  into  the  especial 
dominions  of  the  Lillienstauffen  he  found  the  deepest 
interest  in  every  mile  of  the  iron  way.  It  was  his 
ideal,  this  State,  or  conglomeration  of  States,  in  which 
militarism  was  the  law  of  national  life,  and  mere  babes 
were  drilled  in  the  infant  schools.  It  was  a  model 
country  in  his  eyes ;  its  stations  were  all  designed  to 
be  used  for  defence  if  needed ;  its  churches  were  all 
loopholed  to  be  used  for  artillery  if  wanted ;  lines  of 
circumvallation  and  fortification  cut  across  its  woods 
and  pastures,  and  surrounded  its  old  historic  towns ; 
in  all  its  cities,  large  and  small,  there  were  the  blare 
of  trumpets,  the  beat  of  drums,  the  clash  of  arms, 
the  roll  of  caissons  ;  the  empire  of  Julius  was,  before 
all  else,  a  military  country.  A  cursory  glance 
showed  that  fact  even  to  any  civilian ;  to  a  military 
scientist  like  John  of  Gunderode  it  revealed  its 
imposing  preparations  for  war  in  a  thousand  ways. 

Its  roads  were  all  made  to  serve  for  the  passage 
of  troops  ;  its  bridges  over  rail  and  river  were  all 
built  for  military  use ;  in  every  little  village  there 
were  drilling,  and  trumpeting,  and  butt  shooting ; 
every  factory,  mill,  and  warehouse,  every  group  of 
farm  buildings  and  school  tenements,  had  its  possible 
utility  in  war  marked  upon  ordnance  maps.  He 
knew  that  on  the  frontiers  of  the  Guthonic  empire 


94  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

every  preparation  for  offensive  and  defensive  warfare 
was  carefully  made,  and  he  viewed  with  admiration 
the  immense  barracks,  and  the  gigantic  fortifica- 
tions, which  studded  the  land  like  couchant  herds 
of  mammoths. 

Many  admirers  praised  Julius  for  his  self-denial  in 
keeping  his  sword  sheathed,  and  his  armed  host  in 
unmobilised  peacefulness ;  but,  in  truth,  he  did  not 
go  to  war  because  he  was  not  by  any  means  sure  of 
his  allies,  or  certain  that  his  friends  would  not  at  the 
first  opportunity  become  his  enemies.  Indeed,  of  the 
latter  fact  he  was  quite  sure,  and  it  was  for  that 
which  he  prepared. 

No  dominions  in  the  world  were  so  exclusively 
dedicated  to  the  possibilities  of  war  as  those  of 
Julius.  Everything,  and  every  creature,  in  it  was 
consecrated  to  preparations  for  success  abroad  and 
at  home  against  foreign  foes  or  native  agitators. 
The  nation  ate,  slept,  worked,  lived,  in  a  coat  of 
mail,  like  a  man-at-arms  of  old. 

It  was  thus  that  the  King  would  have  made 
Helianthus  had  he  but  had  his  way  and  an  un- 
restricted exchequer.  He  would  have  known  how 
to  value  and  to  use  a  dominion  like  this  of  his 
nephew,  a  nation  which  allowed  itself  to  be  kept  ready 
equipped  for  war  aggression  of  any  kind,  and  motion- 
less under  all  maltreatment  by  its  ruler,  like  the  set 
of  tin  soldiers  which  lie  side  by  side  in  their  wooden 
box  till  they  are  taken  out  and  put  in  line  by  the 
hand  which  disposes  of  them. 

Helianthus  was,  on  the  contrary,  a  country  full  of 
legend  ;  of  self-will,  of  vague  remembrance  of  a  great 
past,  remote  but  glorious  ;  of  irritated  discontent  with 
the  meagre  results  of  its  recent  achievements ;  it 


v  HELIANTHUS  95 

liked  its  shirt-sleeves,  its  songs,  its  bare  feet  on  the 
hot  turf,  its  dagger  in  its  sash,  its  free  chatter  on  the 

*  OO 

stone  bench,  its  wild  dance,  when  the  empty  stomach 
jumped  in  the  air  and  the  hunger  of  it  was  forgotten 
in  caper  and  caress,  as  the  maidens  gambolled  in  the 
shadows  like  fawns  and  kids,  while  the  moon  shone 
down  between  the  vine  leaves.  The  Helianthines 
were  the  last  people  in  the  world  to  please  a 
monarch  soaked  in,  and  encrusted  by,  militarism  as 
a  salted  fish  is  saturated  with  brine.  He  could  not 
run  a  poker  down  their  backs  ;  he  could  not  make 
them  mute,  rigid,  mechanical,  tight-buttoned,  belted, 
gloved,  booted,  with  eyes  fixed,  and  feet  moved  like 
clockwork ;  they  were  only  awkward  and  grotesque 
in  that  drilled  state  ;  put  the  wild  goat  in  harness, 
where  are  its  mountain  agility  and  grace  ? 

At  the  capital  city  of  his  empire,  Julius,  in  the 
uniform  of  the  6th  Helianthine  Cuirassiers  (for  to 
wear  each  other's  uniforms  is  a  delicate  mutual  com- 
pliment, invented  by  themselves,  which  sovereigns 
never  neglect  to  observe),  met  him  at  the  central 
station,  and  embraced  him  on  both  cheeks,  and 
greeted  with  equal  effusion  the  young  Count  of 
Idumaea,  whilst  his  tallest  and  stoutest  giants  in 
towering  fur  shakoes  and  glittering  corselets  made  a 
double  living  palisade  between  which  his  guests 
passed  to  their  carriages.  John  of  Gunderode  had 
been  unable  to  show  him  any  such  giants  as  those, 
and  Julius  was  as  proud  of  them  as,  in  the  nursery, 
a  child  is  proud  of  having  a  bigger  Noah's  ark  or 

taller    rocking-horse    than    any    that  a  small   child- 

=>  ' 

visitor  possesses  at  home. 

He  also  shook  hands  cordially  with  Deliornis,  on 
whose  breast  he  knew  that  he  would  have  to  place 


96  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

on  the  morrow  the  great  Order  of  the  Eland.  The 
rags  of  the  Minister's  past  stank  in  the  nostrils  of 
Julius ;  but  he  ignored  them  with  admirable  phi- 
losophy. Deliornis  was  a  useful  creature  to  him  at 
the  head  of  foreign  affairs  in  Helios. 

{  My  beloved  uncle  and  revered  ally,'  Julius  called 
his  guest  at  the  banquet-table  of  that  day ;  but  he 
took  care  that  the  entire  course  of  his  revered  ally's 
visit  should  be  a  sequence  of  carefully  calculated 
mortifications.  The  thorns  were  all  masked  by  the 
roses,  but  they  were  sharp.  The  King  felt,  as  his 
reverential  nephew  intended  him  to  feel,  that  there 
are  alliances  which  closely  resemble  vassalage,  and 
that  Helianthus  would  never  be  permitted  to  become 
wholly  independent  of  the  empire  of  the  Guthones. 

He  was  shown,  moreover,  how,  beside  this  won- 
derfully accurate  military  machinery,  so  perfect  in 
all  its  parts,  so  polished  in  all  its  intricacies,  so  en- 
tirely under  command,  so  unfailingly  ready  in  any 
season  and  at  every  hour,  his  own  army,  which  he 
had  left  behind  him  between  the  mountains  of 
Rhaetia  and  the  Mare  Magnum,  was  but  an  awk- 
ward, rusty,  bruised,  and  halting  engine,  uncertain  in 
movement  and  possibly  incapable  in  emergency. 

The  ropes  of  fresh  laurel  swung  from  one  electric 
lamp  to  another ;  the  national  colours  and  the  na- 
tional flowers  of  the  two  nations  were  displayed 
everywhere,  from  triumphal  arches  to  buttonholes  ; 
there  was  all  that  fictitious  enthusiasm  which  is  so 
easily  begotten  by  the  suggestion  of  the  Press  and 
the  pressure  of  the  police ;  martial  music  resounded 
everywhere,  and  the  preachers,  who  are  never  mute 
in  the  land  of  the  Guthones,  preached  militant  dis- 
courses from  Christian  texts.  All  was  love  and 


v  HELIANTHUS  97 

unity,  readiness  for  war  and  solidarity  in  menace  ; 
and  the  newspapers  of  the  world  were  jubilantly  ex- 
cited, or  mournfully  envious,  according  to  their 
geographical  situation. 

Why  serious  persons  of  mature  age,  and  with  the 
cares  of  public  affairs  upon  them,  should  be  supposed 
to  require  amusements  and  decorations  half-childish, 
half-barbaric ;  why  they  should  be  supposed  to  be 
pleased  by  gilt  pennons,  artificial  wreaths,  clusters 
of  lights  imitating  bunches  of  grapes,  or  statues  of 
plaster  draped  in  silks  and  satins,  it  would  be  diffi- 
cult for  any  one  to  explain  ;  but  these  things  are  the 
inevitable  accompaniment  of  all  visits  by  the  ruler 
of  one  country  to  the  capital  of  another,  just  as  the 
sale  of  cheap  toys  and  gingerbread  is  the  accompani- 
ment of  every  village  fair. 

The  prisons  are  filled  with  suspected  people 
crammed  into  them  as  a  measure  of  precaution.  In 
the  poor  quarters  there  are  hunger,  darkness,  sick- 
ness, famine,  misery.  The  thieves  laugh  at  the  law  and 
pillage  the  crowds  ;  the  substratum  of  the  city  is  still 
filth,  famine,  iniquity,  vice,  suffering ;  but  the  tinsel 
and  the  gilding  and  the  banners,  and  the  clusters  of 
electric  lights,  are  all  there,  and  are  all  that  visitors 
and  the  reporters  see.  The  beautiful  horses  prance 
and  plunge ;  the  postillions  crack  their  ribboned 
whips ;  the  massed  bands  play,  the  bells  vibrate  in 
the  air,  the  cannon  boom,  and  the  Powers  that  Be 
are  delighted,  like  little  boys  on  a  roundabout,  with 
all  the  noise  and  stir,  and  gaudy  colour,  and  gilded 
pasteboard.  And  if  they  want  a  deeper  note  in  the 
comic  opera,  is  not  the  Archbishop  of  the  City  there 
to  assure  them  that  they  have  immortal  souls,  and 
are  the  anointed  Vice-Regents  of  Christ  ? 


98  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

Whether  the  scene  be  in  Gallia,  or  Guthonia,  or 
Candor,  or  Helianthus,  or  the  empire  of  the  Septen- 
triones,  the  spectacle  is  always  the  same ;  more 
splendid  in  some,  more  tawdry  in  others  ;  more  cor- 
dial or  more  conventional ;  more  based  on  friendship 
here,  or  more  moved  there  by  fear ;  but  in  substance 
it  is  always  the  same.  It  serves  to  dazzle  the  people  ; 
to  daunt  them  also  by  the  military  display  which  al- 
ways accompanies  it ;  and  to  warn  the  guest.  t  See, 
my  beloved  brother-monarch,'  says  each  of  those 
who  prepare  the  spectacle,  '  I  can  be  the  best  of 
friends,  but  I  can  be  also  the  nastiest  of  foes.'  And  each 
royal  visitor,  smiling,  kissing,  making  pretty  speeches, 
understands  what  the  welcome  to  him  means. 

But  uneasy  lies  the  head  which  wears  a  crown 
overshadowed  by  the  superior  size  of  another  crown; 
and  when  night  fell,  John  of  Gunderode  slept  ill, 
although  he  had  the  honour  of  reposing  on  the  same 
couch  which  had  once  been  pressed  by  the  revered 
limbs  of  the  great  Gunther  of  Lillienstauffen,  famous 
as  the  Ruler  of  the  Iron  Hand. 

The  iron  entered  into  the  soul  of  King  John  with 
everything  he  saw  and  heard  in  the  Guthonic  capital. 
The  perfection  of  all  routine  ;  the  precision  of  every 
movement ;  the  exactitude  of  every  detail  ;  the 
matchless  manner  in  which  all  the  interests  of  the 
nation  were  subordinated  to  the  military  interest ; 
the  perpetual  saluting ;  the  manner  of  course  with 
which  the  officer  treated  the  civilian  as  a  mixture  of 
ape  and  ass,  jostled  him  off  the  curbstone,  kicked 
him  off  the  tram-car,  upset  him  off  a  chair  at  a  cafe, 
and  spitted  him  with  a  sword  as  a  naturalist,  runs  a 
pin  through  an  insect  —  all  this  was  hopelessly  un- 
attainable in  Helianthus.  The  way  in  which  Julius 


v  HELIANTHUS  99 

swept  through  the  street-crowds  on  his  motor-car  as 
Juggernaut  rolls  over  prostrate  multitudes  could  not 
have  been  imitated  by  his  uncle  in  Helios,  where 
the  people,  timid  and  submissive  in  much,  had  in 
them  old  instincts  of  free  and  heroic  races  which  it 
was  dangerous  to  risk  arousing.  The  aspect  of  the 
capital  of  Julius,  which  resembled  a  huge  brick 
barracks,  lent  itself  to  an  admixture  of  prison  and 
exercising-ground  to  which  the  capital  of  Helianthus 
could  no  more  attain  than  a  flower-garden  can  look 
like  a  penitentiary.  The  very  light  in  Helios  laughed 
like  a  saucy  child,  smiled  like  a  happy  maiden ; 
whereas  the  capital  of  the  Guthones  was  a  vast  mass 
of  stone  and  brick  and  iron,  with  cold  mists  sweep- 
ing over  it  from  distant  seas  that  were  frozen  half 
the  year  and  from  plains  surrounding  it  which  were 
scorched  like  deserts  the  other  half;  and  its  popula- 
tion was  armed  and  drilled  and  thrashed  and  put  in 
irons  whenever  their  rulers  desired.  But  it  was  the 
ideal  State  of  John  of  Gunderode,  and  he  laboured 
incessantly  to  make  his  own  realm  resemble  it ;  but 
he  had  inferior  material  to  work  on,  and  he  felt  the 
inferiority  bitterly.  The  Helianthines  had  been  a 
polished,  learned,  and  artistic  race  when  the  Guthones 
had  been  little  more  than  orang-utangs  in  their  fir 
forests  and  their  airy  plains,  wearing  the  skins  of 
wild  beasts  they  killed  and  eating  their  flesh  ;  but  now 
the  former  was  a  worn-out  race  in  the  eyes  of  the 
man  who  ruled  over  them,  and  the  latter  were  in  his 
esteem  the  perfection  of  drilled,  armed,  and  scientifi- 
cally educated  humanity.  But  he  could  no  more 
make  a  Helianthine  into  a  Guthone  than  he  could 
make  a  lyre-bird  into  a  barn-door  fowl  ;  and  the  im- 
possibility made  him  savage. 


CHAPTER  VI 

ON  his  return  to  his  capital,  King  John,  inspired  by 
his  nephew,  sent  the  Crown  Prince  on  a  visit  of  State 
to  a  part  of  his  dominions  named  in  the  pages  of 
Herodotus,  as  in  the  columns  of  Baedeker ;  the  most 
ancient,  poetic,  unaltered,  and  lovely  of  all  the  various 
outlying  portions  of  Helianthus.  It  consists  of  a 
hundred  isles,  or  more  :  some  large,  some  small,  some 
inhabited,  some  left  solely  to  the  birds  of  sea  and 
land,  to  the  hares,  the  wild  cats,  the  squirrels,  the 
moles,  the  porcupines ;  some  few  are  rocky  and 
barren  crags,  but  almost  all  are  densely  wooded 
and  extremely  beautiful  and  romantic.  To  scholars 
they  are  known  by  their  ancient  name,  the  Isles  of 
Adonis,  and  in  much  they  remain  untouched  since 
the  days  of  the  worship  of  Aphrodite.  They  form  a 
series  of  sentinels  between  the  mainland  and  the  open 
sea  ;  but  they  also  constitute  a  danger  to  the  country, 
because  they  are  coveted  by  all  neighbouring  nations 
and  have  been  captured  and  retaken  many  a  time  since 
the  Persian,  the  Carthaginian,  the  Ottoman  fleets 
sailed  through  their  channels.  The  visit  to  them  of 
the  Heir- Apparent  was  a  State  visit,  designed  to  show 
the  interest  which  the  Crown  and  Cabinet  took  in 
these  outlying  but  precious  possessions.  But  there 
were  two  motives  beneath  this  :  one  was  the  desire 


CHAP,  vi  HELIANTHUS  101 

to  know  in  what  degree,  for  defence  or  defiance,  they 
were  already  prepared;  the  other  was  to  ascertain 
their  possible  value  for  speculation.  The  first  mis- 
sion, open  and  announced,  was  that  of  the  Heir- 
Apparent  ;  the  second,  only  spoken  of  sub  rosa,  was 
that  of  the  Minister  of  Marine  who  accompanied 
him  ;  the  Minister  who  was  a  cousin  of  Deliornis. 
Theo  had  a  militant  soul,  not  a  commercial  one ; 
and  he  was,  after  his  own  narrow  and  vain  fashion, 
an  honest  man.  The  King  was  more  modern  than 
he  in  this  respect. 

Elim,  who  knew  well  these  waters  and  these  isles, 
would  have  been  far  more  popular  and  decorative, 
had  he  been  sent  on  such  an  errand.  But  the  King 
knew  the  affection  which  the  maritime  population 
everywhere  in  Helianthus  felt  for  his  second  son,  who 
loved  the  sea  and  seafaring  men,  and  admired  these 
islanders,  who  were  at  once  so  classic  and  so  primitive. 

To  give  them  such  a  chance  of  offering  their 
favourite  a  public  ovation  was  the  last  thing  in  the 
monarch's  thoughts.  He  knew  that  Theo  was 
disliked ;  was  ungracious,  stiff-necked,  and  harsh  ; 
but  as  he  himself  was  so  likewise,  he  did  not  perceive 
the  mischief  these  defects  might  do.  Monarchs  and 
princes  who  were  amiable  and  smiling  on  public 
occasions,  seemed  to  him  like  cabmen  who  should 
give  their  horses  sugar  instead  of  the  whip.  The 
passage  in  history  which  seemed  to  him  the  most 
discreditable  was  that  which  records  how  Louis 
Quatorze  took  off  his  plumed  hat  to  his  gardener. 
Theo  was  not  likely  to  err  by  any  similar  excess  of 
urbanity. 

The  Crown  Prince,  therefore,  was  not  the  man  for 
this  kind  of  errand ;  he  was  not  gracious  or  good- 


102  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

natured ;  his  personality  was  not  attractive ;  he  had 
his  father's  harsh  and  hard  expression,  and  the  gen- 
eral aspect  of  a  major  of  an  infantry  regiment ;  he 
put  more  militarism  into  a  frock  coat  and  a  tall  hat 
than  any  other  man  into  a  full-dress  uniform. 

The  archipelago  was  little  altered  since  the  days 
when  the  altars  of  Venus  had  risen  amongst  the 
myrtle  and  oleanders.  It  was  a  feast  of  beauty  for 
the  eyes,  of  perfume  for  the  nostrils ;  the  islets  seemed 
to  float  on  the  waves  as  swans'  nests  on  the  sedges ; 
the  rose  of  dawn  bathed  them  in  its  warmth  and 
light ;  a  poet  should  have  reigned  there,  a  Catullus 
or  a  Shelley  should  have  dreamed  his  life  away  in  its 
paradise ;  on  their  rocks  and  in  their  shallows  the 
sea-flowers  of  the  dianthus  and  the  gemmae  shone 
like  jewels,  and  the  white  flowers  of  the  acacias 
dropped  into  the  white  surf  of  its  breakers.  To 
change  the  sparkling  sand  into  coal  dust  and  slag ; 
to  fell  the  acacias,  the  laburnums,  the  araucarias,  the 
ilexes  to  feed  the  ever-open  maws  of  factory  furnaces  ; 
to  make  the  heavy  columns  of  black  smoke  obscure 
the  atmosphere  and  hide  from  view  the  radiant 
horizon  —  this  seemed  to  the  Crown  Prince  and  those 
of  his  views  and  epoch  an  utilitarian  work  of  the 
first  and  most  worthy  order.  It  would  take  much 
time,  no  doubt,  and  an  enormous  expenditure  of 
money,  but  then  what  a  noble  work  it  would  be  — 
almost  equal  to  the  black  country  of  Candor  or  to 
the  oil  regions  of  the  great  vast  West !  The  isles 
were  an  ode  of  Anacreon ;  they  should  become  a 
conspicuous  feature  in  the  Share  List. 

The  Crown  Prince  saw  a  great  mercantile  centre 
planted  like  a  Buddha  amongst  avarice,  amid  its  own 
clouds  of  dust  and  smoke  ;  and  the  trees  would  burn 


vi  HELIANTHUS  103 

in  the  ovens,  and  the  waters  be  oily  and  greasy  and 
black,  and  the  people  would  sweat  and  suffer  just  as 
in  the  most  prosperous  regions  of  the  new  world- 
Theo,  though  a  prince,  was  extremely  modern ;  for 
he  was  a  man  of  his  time.  He  cared  nothing  for  the 
flamingo  poised  like  a  rose  and  white  lily  amongst 
the  reeds ;  or  for  the  honeysuckle  and  clematis 
throwing  graceful  sprays  from  tree  to  tree  ;  or  for  the 
radiant  fish  darting  through  the  translucent  waters  of 
the  rock-pools ;  or  for  the  nude  and  gleeful  children 
leaping  through  the  foam,  and  plunging  headlong 
down  the  roaring  breakers.  Here  was  a  multitude 
of  islets,  which  artists  admired  and  historians  talked 
of,  but  which  otherwise  had  no  more  value  than  the 
mesembryanthemum  on  its  ledge  of  surf-washed 
rock.  What  could  be  more  patriotic  than  to  change 
it  into  an  ocean  Manchester,  a  nautical  Pittsburg? 
He  was  by  no  means  an  imaginative  man,  but  as  his 
steam-pinnace  raced  between  the  isles,  he  instinc- 
tively began  to  compose  the  opening  lines  of  a 
prospectus. 

Elim  would  have  been  in  a  congenial  atmosphere  in 
these  isles  ;  he  would  have  been  far  more  intelligent, 
far  more  sympathetic,  far  more  distinguished ;  but  a 
second  son  has  not  the  same  prestige  as  the  Heir- 
Apparent,  and  his  already  widespread  popularity, 
joined  as  it  was  to  his  extreme  and  unorthodox 
opinions,  made  him  unsafe  in  the  King's  estimation. 
Who  knew  what  he  would  not  say  to  the  people  of 
the  isles,  well  known  as  those  people  had  been  for 
many  ages  for  their  maritime  daring,  for  their  in- 
subordinate disposition,  and,  of  later  times,  for  their 
conspicuous  part  in  the  War  of  Independence  ? 
Theo,  on  the  contrary,  stamped  out  free  and  indi- 


io4  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

vidual  opinions  wherever  he  went,  as  a  mastiff  may 
stamp  on  glow-worms. 

For  the  King  had  not  wanted  an  Anacreontic  or 
Tibullian  ode ;  he  had  wanted  a  report  for  a  parlia- 
mentary committee,  a  cut-and-dried  array  of  figures 
for  a  future  Board  of  Green  Cloth,  and  these  he  ob- 
tained from  his  Heir-Apparent,  though  it  hurt  the 
conscience  of  the  Crown  Prince  to  limit  himself  to 
arithmetic,  and  nautical  mathematics,  and  statements 
of  soundings,  and  statistics  of  exports,  without  ex- 
pressing the  sense  of  shame  which  he  felt  that  any 
part  of  his  father's  dominions  should  be  in  so  morally 
benighted  yet  singularly  contented  a  state. 

King  John,  when  it  was  expedient,  could  dismiss 
morality  as  an  unimportant  item.  To  his  eldest 
son  morality  always  ranked  before  anything  else  — 
except  indeed  privilege,  and  the  Brahminic  holiness 
of  his  caste. 

But  he  was  sent  to  cement  unity,  and  to  uphold 
prestige,  with  an  imposing  escort  of  men-of-war. 
The  cost  to  the  country  of  the  cruise  would  be  con- 
siderable, but  no  one  thought  about  that ;  even  if  the 
expenditure  were  large,  it  would  be  easily  covered  by 
an  extra  fraction  upon  hemp  or  flax,  or  upon  corn  or 
maize  or  other  article  of  food  chiefly  used  by  the  poor. 
Additional  taxation  was  easy  in  Helianthus  to  those 
who  imposed  the  taxes ;  it  was  based,  as  indeed  it  is 
in  all  countries,  on  two  simple  rules  :  where  the  shoe 
pinches  already,  pinch  again,  and  squeeze  those 
throats  which  are  already  safely  aphonic.  A  great 
deal  may  be  added  to  the  Exchequer  by  adhering  to 
these  simple  rules ;  there  is  no  disturbance,  and 
the  superior  classes  are  left  unruffled.  And  in  all 
countries  it  is  these  classes  which  most  require  to  be 


vi  HELIANTHUS  105 

conciliated ;  the  classes  which  a  government  cannot 
shoot,  cannot  put  in  the  lock-up,  cannot  charge  with 
seditious  conduct,  cannot  send  to  pick  oakum  or 
make  wooden  pegs,  but  which,  on  the  other  hand,  can, 
rising  from  their  dinner-tables  and  feeling  pleasantly 
warmed  with  good  wines,  turn  out  the  Ministry. 

So  the  Crown  Prince  sped  on  his  way,  quite  sure 
that  the  bill  for  his  wanderings  would  be  paid  with- 
out any  unseemly  squabbling  over  it  in  either  House; 
and  Tyras  drew  caricatures  of  him  as  droll  as  any- 
thing ever  drawn  by  Caran  d'Ache.  Meantime 
Europe  discussed  excitedly  the  probabilities  that  a 
cession  of  some  of  the  isles  was  intended  to  some 
other  Power,  or  else  that  some  other  isles  lying 
outside  the  archipelago  were  to  be  annexed  and 
included  in  it ;  or  else  that  it  was  intended  to  cede 
the  whole  archipelago  to  an  international  syndicate, 
which  would  work  the  mines,  fell  the  forests,  clear 
the  flowery  wilderness,  build  towns  of  corrugated  iron, 
make  heaps  of  slag  and  cinders  where  now  orchids 
bloomed  and  wild  camelias  towered,  and  do  the 
general  work  of  international  syndicates  everywhere. 

The  Crown  Prince,  however,  did  not  go  upon 
such  an  errand,  though  the  vision  of  such  a  syndi- 
cate for  the  future  certainly  floated  seductively  before 
the  minds  of  the  King  and  his  Ministers.  He  went 
harmlessly  on  an  errand  of  what  is  called  in  vulgar 
English,  brag :  a  perfectly  natural  and  innocent 
flourish  of  trumpets  in  the  name  and  the  interests  of 
the  nation,  such  as  good  and  patriotic  princes  are 
sent  upon  by  their  government  in  all  States  of  the 
world,  gathering  popularity  and  sowing  prestige. 

He  took  his  departure  from  the  harbour  of  Helios 
with  much  display  of  bunting,  roar  of  powder,  ap- 


io6  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

plause  of  loafing  crowds ;  he  was  on  board  the  largest 
royal  steam-yacht,  and  was  accompanied  by  various 
ships  of  war,  from  the  huge  and  hideous  Polyphemus 
to  the  last  new  miniature  destroyer,  Hecate. 

The  Hundred  Isles,  the  Isles  of  Adonis,  were  in 
the  south-eastern  waters  of  the  Mare  Magnum,  and 
their  population  was  oriental  in  its  habits  rather  than 
European;  the  Argonauts  must  have  threaded  their 
labyrinth,  and  Theseus  have  sailed  on  their  waters ; 
the  Liberalia  must  have  been  held  on  their  golden 
sands,  and  the  Floralia  under  their  clematis-hung 
trees.  It  was  a  shocking  blemish  to  the  State  in 
Theo's  eyes  that  there  should  be  such  a  set  of  semi- 
savages  on  the  coast  of  Helianthus.  That  they  were 
admirably  made,  classically  graceful,  naturally  gay 
as  young  dogs,  and  as  good-natured,  and  that  they 
had  probably  retained  unchanged  the  morals  and  the 
manners  of  twice  a  thousand  years  before,  was  noth- 
ing in  the  estimation  of  their  royal  visitor,  except  a 
lamentable  survival  of  indecent  paganism.  They  re- 
volted him,  as  did  nude  statues  in  the  galleries  of 
the  Soleia  or  the  museums  of  the  city. 

The  people  of  the  Hundred  Isles  certainly  did 
not  lend  themselves  very  harmoniously  to  the  spec- 
tacle; on  most  of  the  beautiful,  sea-rocked,  separate 
worlds  of  fruit  and  flower  and  fern,  of  silver  sand, 
and  deep,  soft  shadows,  and  red  rocks,  and  creeks 
changeful  in  hue  as  opals,  the  people  were  half-bar- 
baric, wholly  classic  still,  mirthful,  wild,  and  ignorant 
of  all  outside  their  isolated  homes ;  lithe,  handsome, 
brown,  half-naked,  as  little  fed  as  clothed,  but  well- 
grown  and  healthy  from  the  freshness  of  the  air,  the 
freedom  of  their  lives,  and  the  tonic  of  the  salt  water 
in  which  half  their  time  was  spent.  The  inhabitants 


vi  HELIANTHUS  107 

of  the  isles  could  never  be  thoroughly  broken  in  to 
military  discipline.  Their  youths  were  sent  by  force 
to  the  navy,  where  they  made  brave  sailors,  but 
were  restive  under  coercion,  and  passed  half  their 
time  in  chains. 

These  semi-nude,  amphibious  sons  of  the  surf  and 
the  sand  were  a  race  that  shocked  Theo  in  his  inner- 
most feelings  of  propriety  and  correctness.  But  an 
official  posse  of  decorators  had  preceded  him,  as  the 
upholsterer  and  the  florist  and  the  manager  prepare  a 
royal  box  at  the  Opera  House  before  some  great  gala 
visit  of  crowned  heads.  Persons  from  the  larger  isles, 
which  were  somewhat  more  civilised,  were  temporarily 
deported  to  the  smaller  isles  to  leaven  their  barbarism  ; 
deputations  were  formed  on  the  approved  modern 
model,  addresses  composed  and  presented,  presents 
prepared  and  received,  the  leaven  from  the  mainland 
was  sedulously  worked  into  the  original,  oceanic, 
primitive  conditions ;  great  care  was  taken  that  the 
young  mothers  with  children  at  boldly-bared  breasts, 
that  the  little  lads  and  lasses  dancing  naked  in  the 
surf,  that  the  men  leaping  and  wrestling  like  statues 
of  pale  bronze,  unchanged  in  shape  and  habit  since 
the  days  of  Phidias,  should  be  kept  to  the  green 
gloom  of  their  native  woods,  and  all,  or  almost  all, 
that  the  Crown  Prince  should  see  should  be  the 
orthodox  broadcloth,  the  modern  trouser,  the  silk 
hat,  the  shaven  chin,  the  starched  shirt,  the  national 
flag,  the  striped  marquee,  the  consecrated  red  carpet, 
—  everything,  indeed,  that  royal  personages  seem  to 
create  with  their  breath  wherever  they  go,  as  the 
insignia  of  civilisation,  and  will  expect  to  find  ready 
for  them  likewise  in  the  moon  if  a  flying-machine 
ever  take  them  there. 


io8  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

Of  the  true  isles  and  life  of  the  islanders  Theo 
was  allowed  to  see  but  little.  But  what  he  did  really 
see  for  himself,  with  his  sharp  soldier's  eyes,  and 
without  instruction  from  any  one,  in  addition  to 
the  heathenish  habits  which  horrified  him,  was  that 
the  Hundred  Isles  were  almost  utterly  defenceless: 
that  they  constituted  an  ever-open  gate,  through 
which  any  enemy  could  pass  into  the  home  waters 
of  Helianthus,  and  assail  her  fertile  and  accessible 
southern  mainland,  which  had  scarcely  changed  since 
two  thousand  years  before. 

Of  course  a  portion  of  the  fleet  always  guarded 
this  channel,  where  the  last  of  the  isles  marked  the 
juncture  of  the  archipelago  with  the  high  seas. 
But  Theo  had  a  soldier's  incredulity  as  to  the  use 
and  power  of  a  fleet,  unsupported  by  land  forces,  to 
protect  a  country  from  invasion;  and  he  concluded 
at  once  that  what  was  needed  was  a  line  of  sea-walls, 
and  strong  additional  fortifications  at  intervals,  in 
various  places,  heavily  armoured  and  armed,  which 
should  be  able  to  prevent  any  seizure  by  a  coup  de  main 
of  the  most  distant  isles.  He  came  also  to  the  con- 
clusion that  all  the  maps  and  plans  of  the  archipelago 
already  existing  in  the  War  Office  and  the  Admiralty 
in  Helios  were  defective  and  misleading.  He  returned 
to  the  capital  with  the  determination  to  make  the 
nation  spend  many  millions  on  the  necessary  works 
of  survey  and  defence ;  and  the  King  was  never  averse 
to  expenditure,  if  he  himself  were  not  asked  to  con- 
tribute to  it. 

The  fortifications  of  the  archipelago  became  im- 
mediately the  burning  question  of  the  day.  All  the 
military  and  conservative  party  sided  with  the  Crown 
Prince,  and  of  course  all  the  radical  and  socialistic 


vi  HELIANTHUS  109 

party  rushed  into  opposition  of  the  project ;  neither 
party  wasting  either  time  or  trouble  in  looking  into 
the  question  as  it  stood  on  its  own  merits.  This  is 
the  characteristic  modern  fashion  of  dealing  with  all 
public  problems ;  and  it  has  at  least  simplicity  to 
recommend  it.  Does  X.  favour  a  project  ?  That  is 
enough.  X.  X.  immediately  goes  against  it,  tooth 
and  nail.  Does  X.  oppose  it  ?  Then,  incontinently, 
X.  X.  proclaims  that  it  is  the  one  measure  imperatively 
necessary  to  the  national  existence.  This  is  called, 
in  monarchies, c  Government  by  Parliamentary  Repre- 
sentation,' and  in  republics  is  entitled  (  Government 
by  the  Will  of  the  People.'  Both  these  names  sound 
nicely ;  but  what  they  describe  is  not  quite  so  nice  as 
to  be  entirely  satisfactory  to  students  of  modern 
history.  Nor  will  they  be  so  to  the  Gibbons, 
Tocquevilles,  and  Rankes  of  the  future,  who  may 
very  possibly  irreverently  call  it  government  by 
interest,  caste,  temper,  envy,  greed,  hatred,  and  all 
uncharitableness  ;  government,  indeed,  by  the  purse 
and  the  passions  of  humanity,  instead  of  by  its  reason 
and  its  justice. 

The  project  of  the  fortifications  had  one  result 
which  was  good,  and  one  result  which  was  either 
good  or  bad  according  to  the  views  of  those  who 
judged  it.  The  first  was  that  the  scheme  occupied 
the  Crown  Prince  to  the  temporary  exclusion  of  all 
other  interests  ;  the  second  was  that  it  made  the 
Ministry  unpopular.  Theo  ceased  temporarily  to 
worry  the  life  out  of  his  aides-de-camp  and  his 
tormented  colonels,  and  his  poor  soldiers  slept  in 
comfort  for  a  time  in  their  barracks,  their  dormitories 
being  for  once  in  a  while  undisturbed  by  bugle-calls 
of  alarm  in  the  small  hours  of  the  night ;  and  the 


no  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

Ministry,  being  forced,  to  please  the  King,  to  prepare 
and  put  forward  plans  which  proposed  the  expendi- 
ture of  several  trillions  of  francs,  to  be  necessarily 
followed  by  additional  taxation,  played  its  best  cards 
into  the  hands  of  vigilant  and  merciless  opponents, 
and  lost  them.  For  the  best  card  of  the  Prime 
Minister,  Kantakuzene,  was  that  which,  though  in 
part  mere  policy,  was  also  in  part  a  genuine  desire 
in  him  to  better  the  conditions  and  lighten  the 
burdens  of  the  poor  of  his  nation.  The  general 
belief  that  he  was  sincere  in  this  had  made  him 
popular  with  the  people,  even  with  those  sections 
which  condemned  him  as  a  turn-coat,  and  con- 
sidered that,  in  view  of  his  earlier  life  and  pro- 
fessions of  faith,  he  should  never  have  become  a 
Minister  of  the  Crown.  But  when  he  and  his 
Cabinet  fathered  so  monstrous  a  proposal  of  ex- 
penditure as  the  sea  and  island  fortifications,  his  best 
friends  were  aghast,  and  his  defeat  was  assured. 

Viewed  merely  from  a  technical  point  of  view,  the 
project  was  sound.  In  an  epoch  when  fair-faced  Peace 
sinks  under  the  weight  of  her  armour,  and  scowls  like 
a  Medusa  at  her  neighbours,  it  is  undoubtedly  wise  for 
a  nation  to  arm  everywhere  and  in  every  way.  No 
one  can  be  the  first  to  disarm,  under  penalty  of  being 
the  first  to  fall ;  or,  at  least,  such  is  the  opinion  alike 
of  soldiers  and  of  sages,  and  of  those  youngest  sons 
of  Athena,  newspaper  correspondents. 

There  was  also  not  a  doubt  that  the  sea-washed 
chain  of  the  Hundred  Isles  was,  as  it  had  been  for  so 
many  centuries,  one  of  the  fairest  and  most  attractive 
portions  of  the  globe,  and  as  a  possession  was  desired 
by  all.  Hitherto,  indeed,  precisely  because  it  was 
coveted  by  all,  it  had  been  safe  from  any  one  ravisher 


vi  HELIANTHUS  in 

in  especial.  They  all  cried  *  Hands  off! '  to  each 
other ;  and  it  was  felt  that  the  terrible  bugbear  and 
Jack-in-the-Box,  called  an  European  war,  would 
inevitably  follow  any  attempt  on  the  part  of  any 
single  Power  to  trouble  the  peace  of  the  Helianthine 
Archipelago.  But  who  could  say  how  long  this 
suspension  of  hostilities  might  last  ? 

'  I  am  always  reluctant  to  give  any  expression  of 
my  views  on  subjects  which  are  before  Parliament,' 
said  Othyris  to  a  friend,  who  pressed  him  to  give  his 
opinion  on  the  matter,  *  and  this  is  in  especial  my 
eldest  brother's  project.  But  I  fear  that  we  are  do- 
ing what  every  nation  does  at  this  time  of  the  world's 
history  —  trusting  for  defence  to  money,  stone,  metal, 
and  projectiles,  whilst  we  enfeeble  the  temper  and 
the  spirit  of  the  people  without  whom  those  defences 
are  useless.  It  is  impossible  that  you  can  incessantly 
hustle  and  worry  and  unnerve  a  populace  with  in- 
numerable by-laws,  fines,  threats,  and  taxes,  and 
leave  them  a  spirited  and  dauntless  community. 
The  tyrannical  minutiae  of  modern  government, 
of  municipal  activity,  of  police  supervision,  of 
medical  regulations,  of  house-to-house  espionage, 
of  perpetual  interrogation,  investigation,  and  inter- 
ference, must  cow  a  populace ;  its  effect  is  the  same 
on  men  as  that  of  the  muzzle  on  dogs.  Until  now 
the  population  of  the  isles  has  been  let  alone  in 
a  great  measure.  They  have  been  allowed  to  rule 
themselves  to  a  large  extent,  taxation  and  conscrip- 
tion apart.  They  are  primitive,  not  ungentle,  but 
wild  and  little  touched  by  the  life  and  laws  of  the 
mainland.  They  form  the  best  aegis  to  the  archi- 
pelago. I  do  not  think  they  will  willingly  be  shut 
up  within  sea-walls  and  fortresses,  or  easily  be  forced 


ii2  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

to  congregate  in  little  walled  coast  towns.  Their 
origin  is,  I  believe,  Phoenician.  They  are  children 
of  the  sun,  and  the  waves,  and  the  storm.  They 
shout  and  chant  as  they  ride  the  white  horses  of  the 
surf.  They  dive  down  to  the  coral  reefs,  and  climb 
the  stems  of  the  palms  to  the  crowns.  They  would 
fight  till  the  sea  ran  red  against  invading  foes ;  but 
shut  up  behind  mortised  blocks  of  stone  they  will 
grow  either  sullen  and  savage,  or  anaemic  and  tuber- 
culous. My  brother  sees  his  fortifications  and 
nothing  else  ;  but  the  men  who  come  behind  him, 
to  carry  out  his  plans,  see  their  mills,  their  mines, 
their  million-volt  power-stations,  their  huge  barracks 
full  of  workers  grinding  gold  for  them  ;  and  as  behind 
the  soldier  struts  the  engineer,  so  behind  the  engi- 
neer stalks  the  syndicate,  and  the  archipelago  will  be- 
come what  Bombay  has  become  —  one  vast  factory. 
My  brother  is  entirely  sincere,  he  is  perfectly  single- 
minded  ;  he  would  no  more  carry  two  minds  than 
he  would  wear  two  sabres.  But  those  behind  him 
are  neither  simple-minded  nor  single-minded,  and 
they  use  him  to  their  own  ends.  They  have  one 
sole  intention  —  to  make  money;  and  he  is  one  of 
the  mints  in  which  they  coin  it.  He  has  no  idea 
whatever  that  he  is  being  used  as  a  mere  tool  by  pro- 
jectors, contractors,  financiers,  and  all  the  rest  of 
the  gang :  he  honestly  believes  that  he  is  doing  a 
patriotic  act,  and  endeavouring  to  strengthen  the 
country  where  she  is  weakest  and  most  vulnerable. 
He  looks  forward  to  an  honest  and  useful  expenditure 
of  subscriptions  voluntarily  given  by  the  nation.  He 
does  not  as  yet  imagine,  and  (if  he  ever  comes  to 
know  it)  he  will  never  admit,  that  he  will  be  only 
made  the  decorative  handle  to  a  gigantic  job.' 


vi  HELIANTHUS  113 

The  Crown  Prince  was,  indeed,  primarily  occupied 
with  the  moral  side  of  the  question,  being  a  person 
to  whom  moral  questions  were,  as  they  were  to  his 
cousin  Julius,  directly  delegated  by  Heavenly  Powers 
for  observation  and  enforcement  upon  the  nation. 
But  almost  equally  precious  and  important  to  him 
was  the  necessity  of  losing  no  time  in  putting  in  a 
state  of  defence  these  romantic  isles  and  islets  which 
ran  out  into  the  open  sea  like  children  racing  in  the 
waves.  He  really  scarcely  knew  which  was  the  more 
horrible  of  the  two,  the  open  sensuality  of  the  people, 
or  the  open  peril  of  these  undefended  and  scattered 
places  on  which  they  dwelt.  He,  indeed,  on  his 
return  to  the  capital,  did  not  any  longer  conceal  the 
horror  which  he  had  felt  at  the  moral  condition  of 
the  islands ;  however  discreetly  it  had  been  veiled 
from  him,  he  had  seen  much  which  seemed  to  him 
the  nudest  paganism. 

1  Their  sexual  intercourse  is  often  promiscuous,' 
he  said,  in  an  awed  whisper  of  horror,  when  he  re- 
turned to  the  capital. 

c  And  our  houses  of  ill-fame,'  said  Othyris,  f  what 
are  they  ? ' 

Theo  did  not  reply. 

There  were  many  offences  in  his  generation,  in  his 
country,  in  his  barracks,  in  his  military  colleges, 
which  he  could  neither  alter  nor  chastise,  and  which 
he  preferred  to  ignore. 

The  greatest  martinet  must  be  content  to  ignore 
sometimes  ;  he  cannot  always  be  sitting  on  court- 
martial. 

Whitewash,  religion,  and  legal  marriage  appeared 
to  him  to  be  urgently  required  in  these  sea-rocked 
nests  of  immorality.  The  long,  low,  wooden  houses, 


n4  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

thatched  with  sea-rushes,  and  covered  by  creepers, 
were  hotbeds  of  vice  and  of  sin  in  his  eyes.  Square 
sanitary  dwellings,  built  of  brick  and  stuccoed,  roofed 
by  tiles  or  slates,  with  fire-proof  floors,  patent 
kitcheners,  sinks,  safes,  and  water-pipes,  with  the 
surrounding  trees  well  cleared  away  on  all  sides  of 
each  habitation,  would  make  of  the  island  population 
who  should  inhabit  them  a  wholly  different  kind  of 
people.  It  would  take  time ;  no  doubt  it  would  take 
time ;  but  such  changes  were  absolutely  necessary. 
The  people  would  rebel,  no  doubt;  had  they  not 
rebelled  in  Helios  when  the  rookeries  of  the  old 
quarters  had  been  broken  up  and  cleared  away  ? 
Was  not,  unto  this  very  day,  the  law  of  decency, 
which  forbade  the  bathing  in  the  sea  at  Helios  of 
persons  without  bathing-clothes,  resisted  violently 
by  many  people,  even  by  people  who  were  other- 
wise respectable  ? 

The  advice  of  Herbert  Spencer,  '  Govern  me  as 
little  as  you  can,'  was  the  opposite  of  Theo's  rule 
of  conduct  and  of  wisdom.  To  govern  the  public  in 
every  small  matter,  in  every  insignificant  trifle,  was 
his  ideal  of  good  government.  He  had  once  with 
his  own  august  lips  ordered  a  cottager  to  turn  a  cat 
and  her  kittens  off  a  child's  bed  one  day  when  he  had 
looked  in  at  a  cottage  doorway  as  he  waited  for  a 
village  smith  to  replace  a  lost  nail  in  one  of  his 
horse's  shoes. 

£  Cats  are  subject  to  many  contagious  diseases, 
contact  with  them  is  most  perilous,'  he  had  observed ; 
and,  terrible  to  relate,  the  cottager,  who  did  not  know 
who  the  visitor  was,  had  bawled  at  him  :  *  The  child 
and  the  cat  have  slept  together  five  mortal  years,  and 
you  gentry  had  better  not  come  meddling  here '  — 


vi  HELIANTHUS  115 

a  reply  which  led  to  a  domiciliary  visit  from  the 
police  of  the  nearest  station,  and  the  ejection  of  the 
man  by  his  employer  from  the  farm  on  which  he 
worked. 

Theo  certainly  had  intended  no  such  results  to  the 
family  when  he  made  his  remark  about  the  ante- 
hygienic  properties  of  the  feline  race ;  and  he  had 
never  given  another  thought  to  either  the  cat  or  its 
owner  after  he  had  bidden  one  of  his  gentlemen 
acquaint  the  Syndic  of  the  district  that  a  certain 
labourer  in  a  certain  place  appeared  to  be  a  person 
who  required  some  admonition  in  regard  to  his  want 
of  respect  and  of  cleanliness.  But  a  hint  to  an 
official  mind  against  a  man  who  is  of  no  account 
and  is  always  in  arrears  with  his  hearth-tax,  is  like  a 
hot  cigar-end  thrown  into  a  heap  of  dry  maize  stalks. 
It  flames  alight  and  consumes  everything  the  flame 
can  reach,  until  there  is  nothing  left  except  a  little 
charred  ash  on  a  burnt  piece  of  ground. 

Theo  never  gave  another  thought  to  the  insolent 
cottager,  but  his  suggestion  to  the  Syndic  bore  fruit. 

A  man  does  not  like  interference  in  his  own  house. 

A  man  is  rough  with  his  tongue. 

A  man  is  slow  in  paying  the  sum  called,  so 
sympathetically,  the  hearth-tax. 

A  man  harbours  the  subversive  and  intolerable 
belief  that  on  his  own  mud  floor,  between  his  four 
wattled  walls,  he  is  master. 

To  the  official  or  bureaucratic  mind  all  these 
beliefs  are  of  a  damnable  iniquity,  seed  of  all  poison 
and  peril.  They  are,  to  that  mind,  the  root  of  all 
evil,  and  to  hunt  them  down  and  stamp  them  out 
is  a  religious  duty,  as  the  burning  of  heretics  was 
to  the  Inquisition. 


n6  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

{  Kill  the  cat,'  said  his  wife.  '  She's  been  our 
curse.' 

c  No,'  said  the  man,  c  she  is  a  good  cat.  She  has 
fed  with  us,  and  she  shall  starve  with  us,  since  starve 
we  must.' 

1  She  will  get  mice  for  herself/  said  the  wife. 

1  Not  here,'  said  the  man.  (  Mice  run  away  from 
a  cold  hearth  and  an  empty  platter.  They  are  just 
like  human-folks.' 

The  cat  found  mice  in  the  fields,  but  the  man  did 
not  find  work  there.  The  farmers  were  shy  of  a 
labourer  who  had  been  visited  by  the  police  from 
the  town,  and  who  had  incurred  the  displeasure  of  a 
high  personage.  The  country  round  was  sparsely 
populated ;  the  land  was  poor,  the  land  owners  were 
poor,  the  harvests  were  poor ;  it  was  a  part  of  the 
eastern  provinces.  There  were  at  all  times  more 
workers  on  the  soil  than  there  was  work  to  give 
them.  Moreover,  when  you  can  only  do  a  humble 
kind  of  work,  which  many  can  do  as  well  as  you  and 
many  others  can  do  better,  you  can  create  no  de- 
mand for  yourself,  you  are  quickly  replaced,  no  one 
wants  you.  If  you  are  pushed  out  of  the  one 
groove  in  which  you  have  always  run,  you  will  be  as 
helpless  as  an  engine  lying  on  its  side  at  the  bottom 
of  an  embankment.  This  man,  out  of  work,  grew 
desperate.  He  begged  on  the  roads.  He  even 
threatened  those  he  met.  His  wife  was  in  her 
seventh  month  with  her  fourth  child.  The  owner 
of  the  cottage  turned  them  out  of  it,  and  kept  the 
little  furniture  they  had  in  the  place  for  rent  which 
was  overdue.  Misery  never  visits  you  by  herself: 
she  always  brings  a  tribe  of  followers. 

They  slept  under  stacks  of  cut  wood  on  a  moor. 


vi  HELIANTHUS  117 

This  was  vagabondage  according  to  the  law.  The 
man  was  taken  up  by  the  rural  guards,  who  had 
a  black  cross  against  his  name.  The  woman  was 
left  half-dead,  with  a  still-born  babe  ;  her  couch 
was  the  rough  turf.  The  little  children  wandered 
over  the  moor  to  try  and  find  something  to  eat  on 
bush  or  briar.  They  lost  themselves,  and  were  dis- 
covered by  a  shepherd  days  afterwards,  their  bodies 
and  limbs  cleaned  of  their  flesh  by  birds  of  prey. 
When  the  man  was  let  out  of  prison  he  had  no 
longer  either  wife  or  children  ;  he  had  neither  home 
nor  work ;  he  lost  his  mind  and  became  violent ; 
the  authorities  had  him  removed  to  a  lunatic  asylum. 
What  becomes  of  poor  friendless  men  who  pass  such 
gates  no  one  ever  knows ;  all  that  is  certain  is  that 
they  leave  all  hope  behind  them,  and  are  as  com- 
pletely blotted  out  from  memory  as  the  dead  who 
lie  nameless  under  sand  or  sod. 

It  was,  perhaps,  almost  an  excessive  punishment 
for  having  been  rude  to  a  prince  about  a  cat. 


CHAPTER   VII 

IT  is  an  established  theory  with  royalties  that  their 
families  must  always  be  in  movement,  circulating 
like  the  gold  at  a  roulette  table.  Accordingly,  in 
the  early  spring  of  the  following  year,  another  royal 
train  was  running  across  one  of  the  most  northern 
and  mountainous  provinces  of  Helianthus  ;  a  region 
overshadowed  by  the  range  of  the  Rhaetian  Alps, 
and  swept  by  their  storms  and  snows.  A  line  of 
railway  had  been  driven  across  it,  up  its  slopes,  along 
its  ravines,  under  its  forests,  through  its  gorges,  and 
was  a  part  of  the  direct  route  which  led  to  the 
old  Emperor  Gregory's  dominions,  where  the  aged 
Csesar's  ninety-seventh  birthday  was  about  to  be 
celebrated  with  all  the  pomp  and  rejoicing  possible 
on  such  occasions. 

It  was  a  dangerous  line,  because  the  strength  of 
the  floods  in  winter,  the  frequency  of  landslips  on 
the  hills,  the  suddenness  with  which  huge  rocks  were 
loosened  by  snow  melting  in  spring  and  were 
hurled  down  on  to  the  metal  rails,  all  combined  with 
the  boisterousness  of  the  rivers,  and  the  ferocity  of 
the  hill-population,  to  render  the  passage  of  a  royal 
train  at  all  times  a  thing  to  be  environed  with  con- 
stant and  minute  precautions.  The  people  living 
in  the  desolate  villages,  in  huts  which  clung  to  the 

nS 


CHAP,  vii  JrtiiLiArN  ittus  119 

stone  ledges  of  the  rocks  like  swallows'  nests,  or  in 
mossgrown  lairs  under  the  pine  woods  like  wolves, 
had  been  known,  in  their  hatred  of  the  railway,  to 
roll  great  blocks  of  gneiss  across  the  rails,  or  to  fire 
their  rude  carbines  at  the  engine-driver  or  the  pas- 
sengers. Therefore  when  a  train  carried  members 
of  the  imperial  family  to  the  Gunderode,  or  mem- 
bers of  the  Gunderode  family  to  their  imperial  rel- 
atives, the  whole  permanent  way  was  alive  with 
officials  and  workmen  on  the  watch  for  danger. 

*  Are  we  worth  all  that  ? '  said  Othyris,  who  was, 
with  his  brother  Gavroche,  the  object  of  this  train's 
especial  journey,  as  he  saw  guards  and  operatives 
patrolling  the  lofty  bridges  and  the  narrow  ledges  of 
one  of  the  mountain  gorges  through  which  they 
passed.  c  If  all  this  be  necessary  to  save  us  from  an 
accident,  why  is  it  not  done  every  day  ?  The  life  of 
any  other  passenger  is  worth  as  much  to  him  as  ours 
to  us.' 

c  But  it  is  to  the  nation  that  ours  is  so  precious ! ' 
said  Tyras,  with  his  worst  grin. 

f  Pshaw  ! '  said  Othyris. 

c  The  dear  stupid  ass  of  a  nation  ! '  said  Gavroche. 
c  It  is  so  sweet  of  it  to  set  our  lives  so  high  above  its 
own  !  And  it  is  very  comfortable  to  journey  along 
like  this,  with  thousands  of  guardian  angels  on  the 
lookout  for  us,  like  the  English  poet's  little  cherub 
that  sits  up  aloft  to  watch  over  the  life  of  poor 
Jack.' 

'  But  there  is  no  cherub  for  poor  Jack  when  he 
goes  by  this  line  ;  and  if  he  crashes  into  petroleum 
waggons,  or  gets  buried  under  boulders,  or  is  crushed 
into  pulp  by  a  goods  train,  who  cares  ? ' 

'  Why  do  you  want  to  be  crushed  ? ' 


120  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

( I  do  not  want  to  be  crushed,  but  neither  do  the 
travellers  of  every  day  in  ordinary  trains ;  and  if 
these  precautions  are  needed  for  us,  similar  precau- 
tions should  be  taken  for  them.  And  they  are  not 
taken.' 

1  Of  course  they  are  not  taken.  Where  would 
the  shareholders'  dividends  be  ?  This  is  a  superb 
line  in  its  engineering,  but  the  promoters  went  bank- 
rupt, you  remember,  and  Max  Vreiheiden  got  it  for 
next  to  nothing.  It  is  he  who  runs  it,  and  he  is  not 
the  sort  of  man  to  keep  the  guardian  angels  all  along 
the  road  for  every-day  travellers.' 

'  Yes :  every  mile  of  the  line  is  being  sentinelled, 
sounded,  looked  over,  strengthened,  cleared,  guarded 
for  us  —  for  us  alone.  Look  at  those  men  running 
along  that  ledge ;  there  is  scarcely  space  for  a  cat 
to  pass  safely ;  a  slip  of  the  foot,  and  one  of  them 
will  be  hurled  into  the  torrent ;  yet  they  are  risking 
their  lives  for  us  —  at  how  much  a  day,  I  wonder? 
Enough  to  buy  a  maize  loaf,  a  curd  cheese,  and  a 
little  tobacco  ? ' 

f  That  is  their  business !  I  have  heard  that 
when  this  line  was  made,  a  good  many  hundreds 
of  workmen  were  killed  in  making  it ;  so  the 
droves  of  slaves  were  killed  in  building  the  Pyra- 
mids. Only  we  call  them  "  operatives,"  to  sound 
pretty,  and  make  believe  that  theirs  is  all  free  labour. 
Of  course  I  know  the  injustice  of  the  thing  as  well  as 
you  do,  only  I  approve  of  it,  and  I  like  to  have  all 
these  ants  running  about,  above  there,  to  tap  the 
rocks  and  make  sure  that  a  loose  one  won't  come 
toppling  down  in  our  path.  They  are  a  kind  of 
visible  Providence,  which  is  comfortable  to  ourselves 
and  reassuring  to  the  insurance  offices.  Even  the 


vii  HELIANTHUS  121 

clergy  think  that  Providence  is  not  quite  to  be 
trusted  alone !  Well,  you  don't  quarrel  with  that, 
do  you  ?  It's  privilege.' 

*  I  quarrel  with  all  privilege.' 

{ O  Lord !  Privilege  is  the  rock  of  ages.  If 
that  went,  where  should  we  be  ? ' 

*  Wherever  our  qualities  and  our  deserts  would 
put  us.' 

Tyras  gave  a  dissentient  grunt.  He  had  an  un- 
comfortable impression  that  his  own  qualities  and 
deserts  would  not,  alone,  entitle  him  to  a  glass  of 
absinthe.  He  had  no  great  opinion  of  his  own  order  ; 
but  it  seemed  to  him  cutting  your  own  throat,  if  you 
were  a  prince  yourself,  to  assume  that  a  prince  could 
possibly  be  judged  by  his  merits. 

Tyras  was  too  intelligent,  and  too  cynically  frank, 
not  to  confess  his  own  worthlessness ;  but  that 
knowledge  did  not  hinder  him  from  the  most  de- 
vout persuasion  that  any  filth  he  indulged  in  was  an 
honour  to  those  whom  it  bespattered,  and,  alas  !  for 
the  baseness  of  human  nature,  no  one  contradicted 
this  belief. 

{  On  triche  Ih  haut !  y  murmured  a  gentleman  who 
was  once  watching  the  play  at  a  private  roulette  table 
where  Gavroche  was  raking  his  gains  in  largely  ;  but 
the  glances,  the  frowns,  the  signs  of  other  persons, 
immediately  made  this  too  candid  person  conscious 
that  all  that  is  seen  must  not  be  said :  that,  in  the 
words  of  the  old  maxim,  f  Toute  v'erit'e  nest  pas 
bonne  a  dire.'  It  was  an  understood  thing  in  all  the 
good  society  of  Europe  that  the  Prince  of  Tyras  must 
always  be  allowed  to  win  at  play. 

4  This  train  is  altogether  new,'  said  Othyris,  look- 
ing up  at  its  ceiling,  painted  with  the  story  of 


122  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

Europa.  f  It  must  have  cost  half  a  million  of 
francs.' 

£  I  dare  say.  Max  knows  where  his  bread  is 
buttered.  He  means  the  King  to  make  him  a  duke. 
Fifteen  years  ago  he  was  a  clerk  in  one  of  the  public 
pawn-shops.  It  was  there  that  he  got  to  know 
where  the  shoe  pinched  on  people's  feet.  He  lent 
little  sums  out  on  pawn-tickets  ;  when  they  were  not 
paid  up  in  time  he  took  the  tickets ;  that  was  how 
he  made  his  first  money  ;  sometimes  he  used  to  get 
things  worth  a  great  deal  for  a  few  copper  bits  he 
had  lent  on  them.  He's  rather  a  pleasant  fellow, 
but  that  is  how  he  began.' 

'  Does  he  lend  to  you  ? '  said  Othyris,  curtly. 

t  No ;  he  loses  to  me  at  cards,'  said  Tyras,  with 
one  of  his  suggestive  grins. 

*  In  your  own  house  ? ' 

( Not  yet,'  said  Gavroche,  who  appreciated  the 
question.  *  Theo  has  him  to  lunch  to-day.  But 
Theo's  motives  are  immaculate.  He  wants  to  float 
the  great  Fortification  Loan.' 

(  There  is  one  comfort,'  said  Othyris,  *  Herr  Vrei- 
heiden  will  undoubtedly,  eventually,  rook  you  both.' 

£  Oh,  he'll  take  it  out  of  us  certainly,'  replied 
Tyras,  light-heartedly ;  c  and  out  of  the  country 
too  ! ' 

The  train  made  a  sound  like  a  death-rattle  as  it 
ran  across  one  of  the  lofty  bridges  of  the  line  which 
were  triumphs  of  engineering  science ;  beneath  it 
roared  the  deep,  green,  foaming  waters  of  a  river 
which,  happily  for  its  virgin  beauty,  was  too  far  from 
the  haunts  of  men  for  even  engineers  to  dream  of 
violating  it  for  the  use  of  cities  or  the  purposes  of 
electricity. 


vii  HELIANTHUS  123 

Tyras  sauntered  into  the  next  compartment  to 
get  a  drink  ;  Othyris  was  left  alone  with  his  own 
thoughts  and  the  view  of  the  sombre  landscape  and 
the  furious  tumbling  waters.  His  meditations  were 
as  dark  as  the  pine-clothed  mountains  shutting  out 
the  sky.  He  loathed  the  egotism  of  his  caste,  and 
he  was  forced  to  accept  its  protection  and  its  pro- 
visions. He  envied  an  angler,  standing  bare-legged 
on  a  boulder  of  rock  in  the  midst  of  the  eddying 
emerald  current. 

The  Fortification  Loan  was  taken  up  by  Max 
Vreiheiden,  and  Max  Vreiheiden  was  lunching  with 
Theo !  Theo,  who  was  supposed  to  be  an  honest 
man  and  to  keep  his  hands  clean ! 

Max  Vreiheiden  had  seen  the  light  in  a  poor 
quarter  of  the  capital  of  the  Guthonic  Empire.  A 
mutilation  of  three  fingers  of  his  left  hand  had 
spared  him  the  military  ordeal.  As  a  boy  he  had 
sold  daily  journals,  cheap  sweetmeats,  wooden  toys, 
or  anything  else  which  anyone  would  entrust  to  him. 
If  he  were  not  always  honest  in  his  petty  trading,  he 
had  at  least  the  adroitness  to  remember  and  observe 
the  one  necessary  commandment,  c  Thou  shalt  not 
be  found  out ; '  he  was  punctual,  zealous,  intelligent, 
obedient,  silent;  he  had  a  wonderful  capacity  for 
figures,  and  could  do  the  most  complicated  sums  in 
his  brain.  In  a  word,  he  was  of  the  stuff  of  which  the 
modern  world  makes  its  leaders ;  he  would  eat  any 
amount  of  dirt  in  the  service  of  anybody,  provided 
that  the  dirt  was  the  washings  of  a  gold-pan.  Such 
a  youth  is  sure  to  make  his  way  to  the  front ;  more 
slowly  in  Europe  than  in  the  Americas,  but  still 
surely.  Before  he  was  thirty-five  he  was  a  Colossus 
of  the  money-market ;  owned  provinces,  mines, 


124  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

kingdoms,  diamond-fields,  pearl-fisheries,  and  many 
newspapers ;  had  tens  of  thousands  of  Chinese,  of 
negroes,  of  Kaffirs,  of  coolies,  under  his  law,  in  con- 
ditions which  were  slavery  in  all  except  name,  and 
something  still  worse  than  slavery ;  and  meantime 
had  his  health  drunk  at  the  banquets  of  Corpora- 
tions, and  his  hand  shaken  by  sovereigns.  (  My 
Max  could  buy  all  their  crowns,'  said  his  little  old 
mother ;  and  they  knew  it. 

Theo  was  an  honest  man,  as  Gavroche  had  said ; 
he  had  up  to  the  date  of  his  inspection  of  the  Isles 
of  Adonis  never  been  touched  by  that  form  of 
covetousness  and  unscrupulousness  which  makes  the 
speculator,  whether  the  speculation  be  a  cocoanut  at 
a  fair-raffle  or  a  gigantic  scheme  on  the  Exchanges 
of  the  world.  His  mind  and  character  were  narrow, 
hard,  unreceptive,  cramped  by  prejudice  and  by 
privilege,  but  honourable  in  their  own  dull  fashion. 
Yet  for  the  first  time  some  virus  of  the  modern 
disease  of  acquisitiveness  was  instilled  into  him  when 
he  heard  and  read  the  prospectus  of  Max  Vreiheiden 
concerning  the  Hundred  Isles. 

He  believed  sincerely  that  his  patriotism  alone 
moved  him  in  his  desire  to  see  the  archipelago 
fortified,  and  that  his  decency  and  enlightenment 
alone  inspired  schemes  for  the  civilisation  of  the 
picturesque  and  scandalous  islanders.  But  he  was 
unconsciously  tempted  by  the  golden  bait  hung  out 
to  him.  Like  most  heirs  to  thrones,  the  demands  on 
him  were  much  in  excess  of  his  means  of  expenditure. 
Economical  as  both  he  and  his  wife  were,  they  were 
almost  painfully  harassed  by  the  tenuity  of  their  re- 
sources ;  and  to  make  ends  meet  was  as  hard  to  them 
at  times  as  to  any  village  shopkeeper  or  shoemaker. 


vii  HELIANTHUS  125 

So  Max  Vreiheiden  lunched  with  them  on  this 
day.  And  the  Crown  Princess,  who  knew  all  about 
him,  was  not  pleased ;  although  she  smiled,  as  she 
was  ordered  to  do,  and  exchanged  reminiscences 
with  him  of  their  mutual  country,  which  was  once 
defined  by  a  royal  lady,  exiled  to  it  by  her  marriage, 
as  a  land  of  fir-trees  and  potatoes. 

Othyris  was  roused  from  his  thoughts  by  the 
shrill  voice  of  Gavroche. 

f  And  our  venerable  Gregory  ?  Has  he  not  en- 
joyed life  ninety  odd  years  ?  And  have  not  all  the 
good  physicians  been  busy  all  the  world  over  in 
brewing  serum  to  put  sap  into  his  worn-out  trunk  ? 
Oh,  my  good  Elim,  so  long  as  we  can  buy  men 
at  their  own  price  they  will  always  make  life  pleas- 
ant to  us.' 

f  Perhaps :  but  if  we  be  of  the  type  which  does 
not  care  to  buy,  or  will  not  stoop  to  buy  them  ? ' 

1  Oh,  then,  we  are  irreconcilables,'  said  Tyras,  with 
his  little  thin  uncanny  laugh  ;  *  then  we  are  doomed 
to  have  a  bad  time  of  it  from  our  cradles.  There  is 
nothing  so  diverting  as  le  marche  aux  hommes,  and 
most  amusing  of  all  is  the  persuasion  of  men  that 
they  remain  incorruptible,  when  one  has  just  paid 
for  them  body  and  soul !  But  if,  like  you,  we  are 
irreconcilables,  who  don't  see  the  fun  of  the  fair,  of 
course  it  is  all  lost  upon  us.' 

*  In  that  sense  I  am,  I  confess,  an  irreconcilable. 
The  baseness  of  my  fellow-creatures  does  not  amuse 
me.' 

'  Then  you  lose  the  best  part  of  the  eternal  Com'edie 
Humaine* 

'  I  see  but  little  comedy,  for  over  it  all  —  there  is 
death.' 


126  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

'  Eh,  that  is  the  biggest  joke  of  the  whole  !  All 
the  pother  and  bother,  the  cheating  and  intriguing, 
the  lying  and  the  toadying,  the  scrimmage  and  the 
scoundrelism  of  it  all,  only  to  end  in  a  handful  of 
ashes,  or  a  shell  of  wood,  after  a  tale  of  years  not 
so  long  as  an  elephant's  when  he  is  allowed  to  live 
out  his  natural  life.  To  see  men  taking  ground- 
leases  for  nine  hundred  and  ninety  years  when  their 
own  measure  is  at  most  fourscore,  is  there  any  droller 
farce  than  that  ?  Or  the  fellow  who  begins  life  as  a 
labourer,  or  a  clerk,  and  by  sharpness  and  gambling 
in  stocks  gets  to  be  owner  of  millions  before  he  is 
thirty-five,  and  dies  at  forty  of  an  aneurism  from 
over-strain,  just  as  he  is  beginning  to  lick  his  lips 
and  enjoy  himself  ?  What  is  that  if  not  the  most 
delicious  comedy  one  can  see  ? ' 

1  My  dear  Gavroche,'  said  Othyris,  'whether  a 
theatre  amuses  one  or  not,  depends  more  on  one's 
own  mood  than  on  the  stage  one  watches.  It  is  so 
with  the  theatre  of  life.  It  diverts  you.  It  saddens 
me.  You  have,  I  admit,  the  better  part.' 

cAnd  yet  your  liver  is  sound  and  mine  is 
spavined ! '  said  Tyras,  enviously.  '  By  all  the  rules 
of  physiology  it  is  you  who  should  laugh  and  I  who 
should  weep.' 

1  Do  you  think  pity  is  only  born  of  a  bad  digestion  ? 
It  is  the  pity  I  feel  for  men  which  makes  me  un- 
able to  grin  as  you  do  at  the  sight  of  their  struggles. 
The  other  day  at  a  social  congress  in  the  city  of 
London  a  speaker  gave  it  as  his  deliberate  opinion 
that  the  increase  of  wages  had  only  led  to  the  in- 
crease of  drunkenness.  Is  that  not  a  fact  to  make 
even  you  serious  ?  To  me  it  seems  that  nothing 
more  sad  was  ever  said.  It  is  true,'  he  added,  with 


vii  HELIANTHUS  127 

an  inflection  in  his  voice  which  Gavroche  understood, 
'  that  it  is  perhaps  still  more  sad,  as  it  is  certainly 
less  excusable,  when  a  gentleman  burns  up  his  vis- 
cera with  alcohol  and  kills  his  brains  with  absinthe.' 

f  Damn  you  ! '  said  Tyras. 

f  Damn  me,  certainly,  if  it  please  you  to  do  so. 
But  why  damn  yourself?  ' 

*  I  enjoy  myself.     I  wallow  in  the  mud  ;  lots  of 
creatures  like  to  do  that ;  we  have  as  much  right  to 
our  mud  as  you  have  to  your  spring-water/ 

*  What  we  have  a  "  right "  to  is  very  questionable. 
The  rough  in  the  crowd  and  the  prince  in  the  carriage 
both  think  they  have  a  right  to  be  maintained  by  the 
ratepayers,  but  I  doubt  it  in  either  case.' 

(  Oh,  we  know  you  do  ;  you're  an  anarchist ! ' 

( I  am  an  anarchist  if  it  be  one  to  find  the  world 
in  a  most  disreputable  state  of  carnage  and  confusion. 
But  I  fear  I  am  not  even  an  anarchist,  for  I  do  not 
believe  in  the  heaven-compelling  powers  of  revolvers, 
or  in  the  goddess  Justitia  being  carried  in  a  bomb. 
What  I  do  understand,  however,  is  why  poor, 
desperate,  and  foolish  men  do  think  so,  especially 
when  they  see  un  grand  de  la  terre,  like  the  Prince  of 
Tyras,  wallowing  in  the  mud,  which  he  prefers  to 
spring-water.' 

c  Damn  you,'  said  Gavroche,  a  second  time. 

f  You  are  such  an  imbecile,'  Othyris  added.  c  You 
have  everything  you  can  desire.  You  are  not  a 
Hercules,  but  you  have  sound  health.  You  are  so 
good-looking  that  the  women  would  go  mad  about 
you  if  you  were  a  peasant.  You  have  immense 
riches,  and  can  do  what  you  like  with  them.  You 
have  talents  which  are  very  nearly  genius.  Yet  you 
enjoy  nothing,  because  you  have  Hamlet's  disease  in 


128  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

you  :  the  craze  to  set  a  wrong  world  right,  and  turn 
a  whirligig  of  lunatics  into  an  academy  of  philoso- 
phers. What  the  deuce  does  the  world  matter  to 
you  ?  You  did  not  make  it.  Why  don't  you  amuse 
yourself,  and  let  other  men  go  hang  as  they  please  ? ' 

f  Why  did  Hamlet  trouble  himself  about  other 
people's  sins  ?  He  was  not  responsible  for  them.' 

*  Nor  are  you  responsible  for  the  country's  mis- 
government,  if  it  be  misgoverned.  If  you  were  king 
to-morrow  what  could  you  do  to  make  it  better 
governed  ?  Nothing.  The  whole  thing  is  -cut  and 
dried,  and  unalterable.  You  have  too  much  brain  to 
believe  you  could  change  it.  You  could  not  put  a 
fowl  into  every  pot  as  Henri  Quatre  wished  to  do. 
You  could  only  go  on  in  the  groove  in  which  others 
have  gone  before  you.' 

4 1  am  well  aware  of  it !  And  then  you  wonder 
that  I  am  rebellious  against  fate  ? ' 

fl  wonder  why  you  kick  against  the  pricks  instead 
of  taking  the  goods  the  gods  give  you.  Hamlet 
could  have  been  as  happy  as  a  grig  if  he  had  liked. 
But  he  was  Hamlet  —  unfortunately  for  himself.' 

Othyris  smiled. 

'  O  cursed  spite, 
That  ever  I  was  born  to  set  it  right  ! 

'  I  assure  you  I  have  not  Hamlet's  belief;  I  do  not 
think  I  was  born  to  any  such  high  end  or  aim.  But, 
as  I  told  you,  what  makes  you  grin  makes  me  sigh ; 
just  as  you  like  brandy  and  I  like  hock.  There  is 
no  accounting  for  the  diversity  of  tastes,  my  dear 
Gavroche.  However,  I  do  not  think  I  am  like  Ham- 
let. My  disease,  if  it  be  one,  is  of  a  different  kind. 
What  weighs  on  me  is  the  sense  of  an  immense 
responsibility  and  of  an  equally  great  impotence.' 


vii  HELIANTHUS  129 

*  Enjoy  yourself! ' 
Othyris  was  silent. 

1  But  what  will  you  do  when  you  reign,  if  you 
reign  ? '  Tyras  said,  seriously  for  once.  {  A  liberal 
king  is  a  contradiction  in  terms.  A  king  or  an  em- 
peror cannot  be  liberal,  because  to  preserve  himself, 
and  what  are  called  the  institutions  which  go  with 
him,  he  must  sanction  the  shooting  and  imprisoning 
of  persons  who  would  upset  him  and  the  institutions. 
If  you  are  ever  king,  either  you  will  have  to  abolish 
yourself  and  disappear,  or  drop  down  into  the  com- 
fortable self-admiration  and  self-acceptance  in  which 
your  ancestors  have  been  content  to  dwell  with  so 
much  complacency.  One  or  the  other  you  must  do.' 

4  Do  you  suppose  that  the  problem  you  propose 
as  a  novelty  has  not  been  the  torment  of  my  soul  ever 
since  I  could  think  the  thoughts  of  a  man  at  all  ? ' 
said  Othyris,  with  some  impatience.  (  There  is  one 
consolation.  Theo's  life  is  a  better  one  than  mine.' 

'  Physically,  perhaps,  but  he  is  hated  by  the  people. 
He  is  more  likely  to  have  a  bullet  put  in  him  than 
you  are.  I  wouldn't  count  too  much  on  his  out- 
living me,  if  I  were  you.  Besides,  you  know,  with 
your  views,  it  is  absolutely  immoral  in  you  to  wish 
him  to  live.  When  he  gets  into  saddle,  won't  he 
use  the  spurs  !  The  good  horse  Populus  will  bleed 
from  both  flanks  when  Theo  sits  astride  on  its  back.' 

Othyris  was  silent.  He  knew  it  only  too  well. 
Theo  had  all  his  father's  hardness  and  cruelty,  with- 
out his  father's  cool  and  shrewd  intuitions. 

*  Enjoy  yourself!  '  said  Tyras,  for  a  second  time. 
4  You  may  worry  yourself  into  tuberculosis,  but  you 
will    not   make    anybody    or   anything   any    better. 
Enjoy  yourself.' 


130  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

But  to  Othyris  the  power  of  enjoyment  was  pressed 
out  of  him  by  the  weight  and  weariness  of  his 
position. 

At  the  frontier  Tyras  left  the  royal  train  to  go 
westward  across  Europe  to  that  capital  of  Gallia  which 
was  the  centre  of  his  chief  delights,  and  where  he  was 
known  by  a.  petit  nom  more  suggestive  than  compli- 
mentary, in  society  more  amusing  than  correct. 
Othyris  continued  his  journey  northward ;  he  was 
sent  to  represent  his  father  and  his  family  at  the  cele- 
bration of  the  ninety-seventh  birthday  of  the  Emperor 
Gregory  at  the  greatest  city  of  the  great  empire  of  the 
Septentriones,  where  frost  still  held  ice-bound  all  the 
rivers,  and  icicles  hung  from  all  the  roofs,  whilst  in 
Helianthus  the  warmth  and  the  sunshine  of  early 
spring  were  flooding  the  land  with  light,  and  filling 
the  saddest  soul  with  that  hopefulness  which  is  born 
with  the  renascence  of  the  earth. 

He  went,  unwillingly,  on  a  mission  in  all  ways 
distasteful  to  him  ;  he  disliked  show,  pomp,  crowds, 
publicity ;  and  he  went  with  especial  reluctance, 
for  a  parental  desire  to  make  him  wed  his  young 
cousin  Xenia  was  being  urged  into  a  formal  betrothal. 

The  vast  empire  of  the  Septentriones,  over  which 
the  Emperor  Gregory  ruled  in  undisputed  autocracy, 
was  at  once  oriental  and  barbaric,  stretching  from  the 
ice  of  frozen  seas  to  the  hot  sands  of  parching  plains. 
It  was  a  giant  with  ponderous  mace  and  mailed  fist, 
and  it  was  a  cripple  with  frost-bitten  feet  and  empty 
belly  ;  it  was  ruled  by  the  whip  and  the  sabre ;  and 
when  tens  of  thousands  died  of  famine  on  its  lands,  it 
let  them  die  :  they  mattered  less  than  the  murrained 
fields  of  wheat. 

Old  Gregory  had  led  an  elegant,  a  joyous,  and 


vii  HELIANTHUS  131 

an  accomplished  life ;  he  had  been  a  patron  of 
the  arts,  a  procreator  of  many  children,  a  free  liver, 
an  amiable  gentleman,  popular  wherever  he  was 
seen,  with  a  suave  smile  and  a  gracious  phrase 
for  all,  especially  for  those  who  were  not  his 
subjects. 

His  life  had  been  long,  prosperous,  and  little 
troubled.  He  was  compared  by  preachers  and  publi- 
cists to  Solomon  in  all  his  glory  and  wisdom  ;  and  if 
his  mind  were  rather  that  of  the  boulevardier^  this 
condescension  in  him  was  only  the  more  affable. 
He  was  now  crystallised  by  extreme  age  into 
legendary  virtue  and  wisdom,  and  all  the  nations 
vied  in  doing  him  honour  and  admiring  his 
longevity.  Longevity,  which  in  the  poor  is  an 
annoying  impertinence,  seems  in  the  rich  and  the 
royal  a  kind  of  condescending  talent.  His  throne 
was  planted  on  a  solid  bed  of  gun-metal,  set  round 
with  half  a  million  bayonets.  Zeus  himself  could 
never  have  been  more  completely  aloof  from  mortal 
struggles.  Revolution  offended  him  because  it 
was  rude,  because  it  was  silly,  because  it  was  im- 
pertinent ;  but  it  was  too  far  away  from  him  really 
to  matter.  Blood  had  run  like  water  in  his  chief  cities 
many  a  time;  gangs  of  young  men  had  been  carried 
in  irons  out  to  exile  and  captivity ;  women  had  been 
beaten  with  rods ;  unarmed  crowds  had  been  mown 
down  by  grape-shot,  and  driven  before  bayonets  ; 
but  all  these  things  had  not  disturbed  him  greatly : 
nay,  the  sound  of  the  cannonades  had  seldom  even 
reached  his  arm-chair  at  the  opera,  his  tribune  at  the 
law  meeting,  his  supper-table,  his  slumber  in  a 
woman's  arms.  Revolution  annoyed  him  as  the 
grinding  of  a  barrel-organ  or  the  quarrelling  of  cats 


ij2  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

may  annoy  a  gentleman  sitting  in  his  library  reading 
Horace :  no  more. 

But  now  the  Emperor  was  very  old ;  old  as 
Nestor,  old  as  Priam,  old  as  Lear ;  his  swollen  legs 
had  long  refused  to  move ;  his  chin  was  sunk  upon 
his  breast ;  his  false  teeth  rattled  and  moved  when  he 
spoke ;  his  eyes  were  very  dim,  and  his  skull  was  as 
bald  as  a  new-born  babe's.  Four  attendants  carried 
him  in  a  chair  contrived  with  the  utmost  ingenuity  to 
make  his  helplessness  as  little  visible  as  possible. 
Ninety-seven  long  years  stretched  behind  him  ;  and 
their  length  had  left  him  little  taste  or  understanding 
for  anything  except  the  pleasures  of  the  table  and 
the  amassing  of  gold,  with  some  little  relish  still  for 
the  adroitness  and  innuendo  of  the  wit  of  the  Paris 
boulevards. 

The  Emperor's  chief  interest,  now,  was  his  white 
Persian  cat,  Blanchette,  and  his  sole  counsellor  was 
his  favourite  physician,  Seychelles.  Wars  and  ru- 
mours of  wars  had  long  lost  their  meaning  for  him ; 
he  was  even  indifferent  to  the  state  of  the  Bourses  ; 
the  state  of  his  own  pulse  alone  concerned  him. 
When  he  was  wheeled  into  the  room  where  his 
Council  of  State  awaited  him,  he  sat  with  his  chin  on 
his  chest,  sniffing  the  odorous  blossom  placed  in 
his  buttonhole ;  but  he  neither  knew  nor  cared  what 
decisions  were  taken  round  the  table. 

His  sons  were  all  dead,  and  the  oldest  of  his 
grandsons,  Stephen,  the  King  of  Gelum,  as  his  title 
was  as  heir  to  the  throne,  had  reached  fifty  years  of 
age ;  a  man  very  impatient  to  reign,  and  grown  very 
grey  under  the  fret  and  fume  of  such  long  waiting. 

4  Grand-grand-Gri-gris '  was  the  nickname  that 
the  numerous  grandchildren  and  great-grandchildren 


vii  HELIANTHUS  133 

of  the  old  Emperor  gave  him  amongst  themselves. 
They  had  a  sincere  veneration  for  him :  he  had  laid 
by  so  much  !  He  had  so  much  to  leave !  As  a 
ruler  he  had  been  niggard,  but  for  his  family  he  had 
stored  up  wealth  untold.  All  the  insurance  compa- 
nies of  the  two  hemispheres  watched  his  frail  existence 
with  as  keen  an  anxiety  as  did  his  descendants,  and 
when  he  coughed  or  took  a  chill,  financiers  quaked 
with  fear,  and  his  grandsons  and  great-grandsons 
thrilled  with  hope.  All  the  Press  of  Europe  agreed 
that  the  preservation  of  the  nonagenarian's  existence 
was  the  greatest  blessing  that  a  merciful  Deity  could 
give  to  a  reckless  and  too  thankless  mankind  ;  that 
his  existence  was  indeed  the  only  rein  by  which  the 
disorderly  passions  of  the  nations  were  held  in  check  ; 
so  that  his  private  virtues,  like  the  public  uses  and 
greatness  of  him,  will  probably  pass  into  a  myth,  in- 
destructible by  criticism,  and  growing  more  and  more 
venerable  with  time. 

Such  legends  die  hard  ;  and  the  legend  of  the  Em- 
peror Gregory's  invaluable  services  to  the  terrestrial 
globe  is  a  very  tough  and  tenacious  one.  Nothing, 
probably,  will  ever  destroy  it,  except  the  publication 
of  secret  memoirs  after  his  death ;  and  there  will  be 
many  and  mighty  persons  interested  to  suppress 
these  —  sufficiently  interested,  perhaps,  to  succeed 
in  burning  them  unpublished. 

The  national  Press  always  said  that  the  family 
affection  so  conspicuous  in  the  imperial  line  was  one 
of  the  holiest  and  most  beautiful  spectacles  which 
the  world  could  see  ;  but  the  old  Emperor  knew 
better.  He  was  attached  to  his  vast  progeny,  but  he 
was  aware  that  most  of  them  looked  forward  impa- 
tiently to  his  decease. 


i34  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

*  Leone  XIII.  is  more  fortunate  than  I/  said  the 
great  Gregory  bitterly  once.     c  He  has  none  of  his 
blood,  begotten  of  his  loins,  who  are  wishing  him 
in  his  grave  ! ' 

However,  he  who  without  a  qualm  would  consign 
thousands  of  the  populations  of  his  cities  to  the  mines, 
or  to  the  underground  cells  of  fortresses.,  was  weak 
of  will  in  his  family  relations,  and  indulgent  to  his 
descendants.  They  were  his  ;  that  sufficed  to  make 
them  sacred  to  him ;  and  his  temper  in  private  life 
was  good-humoured  and  good-natured ;  he  forgave 
much  to  his  own  blood,  nothing  to  others. 

If  he  had  a  preference  for  any  one  of  the  hundred 
and  twenty-two  descendants  by  whom  he  was 
blessed,  he  preferred  Othyris,  who  never  asked  him 
for  anything.  All  the  others  were  always  importun- 
ing for  something,  either  for  themselves  or  for  their 
favourites,  male  or  female.  But  Othyris  had  never 
even  asked  him  for  the  ribbon  of  an  Order  for  one 
of  his  gentlemen. 

*  C'est  un  foUj    had  the  old  Caesar  once  said  of 
Othyris  to  King  John.     '•Mais  ma  foil  cest  un  fou 
fort  distingue' 

1  Je  vois  la  folie  ;  je  ne  vois  pas  la  distinction  I ' 
muttered  King  John,  too  low  for  the  Emperor's  aged 
ears  to  hear. 

Othyris  carried  with  him  the  presents  and  congratu- 
lations of  his  father  and  his  family  to  this  celebration 
of  the  Emperor's  ninety-seventh  year.  He  occupied 
one  of  the  finest  suites  of  apartments  in  the  imperial 
palace.  He  rode  one  of  the  finest  chargers  of  the 
many  fine  horses  which  caracoled  before  and  behind 
the  carriage  in  which  the  aged  sovereign  drove 
through  his  capital.  He  wore  his  uniform  of  Colonel 


vii  HELIANTHUS  135 

of  the  White  Guards  of  the  Septentriones  and  his 
Orders  of  the  great  Empire  of  the  North.  He  was 
present  at  all  the  church  services,  the  addresses,  the 
sacraments,  the  banquets,  the  processions,  the  fes- 
tivities ;  and  that  aged,  bald,  stooping,  deaf,  and 
purblind  man,  the  centre  of  all  this  splendour  and 
pageantry  and  acclamation,  seemed  to  him  a  very 
piteous  figure  as  the  salvoes  of  artillery  thundered, 
and  the  roar  of  applauding  multitudes  rolled  through 
the  air  of  the  great  city. 

'It  is  I  who  am  wrong,  perhaps,  since  everything 
which  pleases  others  displeases  me,'  thought  Othyris. 

The  Father  of  his  People  ! 

The  Nestor  of  Europe  ! 

The  Agamemnon  of  the  North ! 

The  Solomon  of  the  Septentriones  ! 

These  and  many  such  titles  and  phrases  were 
emblazoned  or  embroidered  on  the  banners,  and 
arches,  and  draperies  which  floated  in  the  mild,  pale 
air  of  the  days  of  Pentecost.  The  crowds  were  in- 
toxicated with  that  contagion  of  emotion  which  is 
at  once  as  unreal  and  as  violent  as  the  forces  of  de- 
lirium ;  the  hysterical  passion  of  suggested  feeling, 
which  is  at  once  as  true  and  as  false  as  the  laughter 
or  the  tears  of  the  drunkard.  Women  sobbed  aloud; 
men  dashed  the  tears  of  joy  from  their  eyes  ;  little 
children  were  lifted  up  in  strong  hands  and  bidden 
to  bless  this  king  of  kings  ;  frail  ladies  were  trampled 
under  foot,  nervous  minds  moved  restless  limbs  to 
unseemly  antics,  young  girls  swooned  from  emotion, 
aged  people  cried  and  danced  in  their  temporary 
insanity,  many  younger  people  were  pushed,  bruised, 
kicked,  even  killed ;  the  atmosphere  was  electric, 
intoxicating  as  brandy,  teeming  with  the  infusoria  of 


136  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

disease,  the  infectiousness  of  lunacy, — there  was  no 
sense  in  it,  no  root  in  it,  no  veracity  in  it,  no  more 
than  in  the  ravings  of  the  sick  in  a  typhoid  ward ; 
but  it  had  all  the  violence  of  fever,  and  all  its 
obstinacy. 

flf  he  has  patience  he  will  have  his  desires,  and  be 
a  fetish  too  in  his  turn,'  thought  Othyris,  as  he  saw 
the  dull  and  tired  eyes  of  his  uncle  Stephen  fixed 
upon  the  crowd,  which  was  surging  around  and 
against  the  six  white  horses  of  the  old  Emperor's 
glass  coach :  the  coach  which  had  been  made  a 
hundred  and  fifty  years  before,  and  whose  beautiful 
panels  represented  the  triumphs  of  Alexander.  All 
things  come  to  those  who  know  how  to  wait ;  so  at 
least  the  proverb  affirms,  but  Stephen  was  tired  of 
waiting.  He  was  cowed  and  silenced  by  long  habit 
and  daily  pressure,  but  by  nature  he  was  impatient, 
as  the  feeble  of  will  often  are,  and  all  his  life  was 
crumbling  away  in  this  weary  expectation,  this  chafing 
at  long  delay.  Long  waiting  is  good  for  no  one. 
The  sword  rusts  in  the  scabbard.  The  pearl  grows 
yellow  in  the  jewel-case.  In  his  youth  Stephen, 
King  of  Gelum,  had  been  a  man  of  some  fair  prom- 
ise and  of  many  good  intentions  ;  but  desire  deferred 
and  impotence  to  act  had  left  him  sapless  as  a  hollow 
tree,  bitter  as  a  withered  lemon. 

The  Emperor  was  greatly  fatigued  by  his  public 
appearance;  it  was  not  until  three  days  later  that 
Othyris  was  summoned  to  his  presence. 

He  was  reclining  in  a  large  low  chair;  he  was 
wrapped  in  a  dressing-gown  of  velvet,  lined  with 
sable,  for  he  was  always  cold,  although  his  palace 
was  kept  at  the  temperature  of  a  hothouse.  On  his 
knee  was  his  favourite  white  cat,  Blanchette.  He 


vii  HELIANTHUS  137 

had  been  a  very  handsome  man  in  his  youth  and 
manhood,  and  his  features,  wasted,  haggard  and 
wrinkled  by  extreme  old  age,  were  still  finely  formed, 
and  had  a  distant  resemblance  to  the  portraits  and 
statues  of  him  in  an  earlier  time. 

f  A  quand  la  noce,  Elim  ? '  asked  the  old  man,  with 
a  senile  chuckle. 

Othyris  knew  to  what  he  alluded,  and  intimated 
that  no  bridal  bells  were  likely  to  ring  for  him. 

'Humph,  humph,  you  mistake.  They  will  not 
let  you  remain  celibate,'  murmured  his  great-grand- 
father. {  Wed  Xenia.  Wed  Xenia.  She  is  an  ap- 
petising little  morsel,  and  you  need  not  be  troubled 
about  her ;  let  her  take  the  bit  between  her  teeth ; 
she  will  leave  you  alone.' 

But  he  was  still  tired  from  the  fatigues  of  his  tri- 
umph, and  his  eyes  were  closing  and  his  senses 
growing  drowsy  ;  and  Blanchette  stretched  herself, 
somnolent  also,  on  his  knee,  and  closed  her  own  sea- 
blue  eyes. 

Suddenly  old  Gregory  roused  himself  and  looked 
suspiciously  at  Othyris,  who  remained  standing  be- 
fore his  chair,  not  having  been  either  dismissed  or 
retained. 

*  Look  you,  Elim,'  said  the  old  Emperor,  c  if  you 
take  Xenia,  I  will  dower  her  well.       But  in  my  will 
I  shall  leave  you  nothing;  you  are  so  rich  through 
your  uncle  Basil.' 

f  You  will  do  me  the  greatest  favour,  sir,'  said 
Othyris;  and  he  meant  sincerely  what  he  said.  'I 
have  too  much  as  it  is.' 

*  I  will  leave  you   Blanchette,'    said  the  old  man, 
stroking  his  cat's  snowy  fur. 

'  She  shall  be   Blanchette  la  bienvenue.     Only  I 


138  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

cannot  answer  for  the  politeness  to  her  of  my 
dogs/ 

Old  Gregory  looked  at  him  sharply  through  his 
glasses,  and  smiled  grimly,  showing  the  gold  of  his 
teeth. 

f  Any  other  member  of  your  family  would  have 
offered  to  kill  every  dog  in  Helios  lest  they  should 
molest  Blanchette  !  After  all,  perhaps  I  had  better 
leave  her  to  little  Xenia.' 

c  They  have  qualities  in  common,  sir.' 

The  old  man  laughed.*  and  his  teeth  rattled. 

f  Blanchette  is  a  democrat ;  Xenia  is  certainly  not 
like  her  in  that  respect/  he  answered,  stroking  her. 
'But  democrats  are  easily  tamed  by  warm  rooms, 
and  cream,  and  ribbons  on  their  breasts/ 

He  chuckled  feebly  ;  in  his  far-away  youth  he  had 
been  of  an  acute  and  satirical  humour,  and  he  had 
often  amused  himself  by  playing  with  his  enemies. 

< Blanchette,'  continued  the  old  man,  'Blanchette 
has  no  sense  of  her  position.  She  is  entirely  indif- 
ferent to  her  privileges.  I  have  even  seen  her  in 
one  of  the  inner  courts  sitting  on  a  scullion's  shoul- 
der: it  is  shocking,  but  true.  You,  Elim,  resemble 
Blanchette/ 

f  I  do  not  caress  scullions,  sir,  though  doubtless 
many  good  youths  may  be  found  amongst  them/ 

fln  theory  you  do;  in  theory.  My  dear  Elim, 
the  deluge  will  come  without  you  ;  there  is  no  need 
for  you  to  open  the  sluices  and  cut  the  dykes.  Your 
new  creeds  are  very  old.  Your  ideas  were  held  by 
all  the  eighteenth  century  philosophers,  and  with 
what  end  ?  The  Bourbons  were  slain  and  exiled, 
but  the  stock  returned/ 

Othyris  was  silent.     It  was  as  useless   to  argue 


vii  HELIANTHUS  139 

with  this  fossilised  mind  as  to  reason  with  the  sculp- 
tures in  the  adjacent  gallery  ;  and  in  a  measure  the 
old  man  was  right.  Of  what  use  was  the  indigna- 
tion of  a  Voltaire  ?  A  Galas  always  exists  some- 
where or  other,  is  always  doomed  to  a  scaffold.  Of 
what  use  the  dreams  of  a  Vergniaud,  the  theories 
of  the  Salons  of  the  Directoire,  the  visions  of  an 
Andre  Chenier,  the  hopes  and  ideals  of  a  Rene,  of 
a  Lamartine  ?  They  result  in  Louis  Dix-huit,  in 
Louis  Philippe,  in  Louis  Napoleon,  in  Grevy,  Faure, 
Loubet.  The  blood  and  the  brains  of  the  idealists 
boil  in  the  cauldron  of  suffering,  congeal  in  the  ice- 
caverns  of  death,  and  out  of  them  there  always  arise 
the  Philistine  and  the  Prince. 

*  Leave   your   revolutionary    fancies    and    marry 
little  Xenia,'  said  the  old  monarch.     *  You  will  have 
many  children,  and  she  will  send  your  dogs  to  the 
kennels.      Xenia  is  only  a   saucy,   overgrown,    im- 
pudent child  just  now,  but  she  has  the  making  in 
her  of  a  maitresse  femme.     You  want  a  maitresse 
femme  to  take  charge  of  you.' 

c  And  our  children  would  be  tuberculous  and 
scrofulous  as  the  children  of  the  unions  of  first 
cousins  always  are,'  thought  Othyris.  '  Pray,  sir, 
excuse  me,'  he  said  aloud.  '  Xenia  must  make  the 
happiness  of  some  worthier  mortal.  I  am  quite  in- 
capable of  appreciating  her.' 

(  You  mean  to  disappoint  her  father  and  yours  ?  ' 
the  old  man  asked,  with  some  amusement. 

c  I  cannot  enter  into  their  views  for  my  happiness.' 

<  Why  not  ? ' 

f  For  many  reasons,  sir.' 

*  Humph  !     I   think   you   have  only   to   obey  in 
this  matter.' 


1 40  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

Othyris  was  silent ;  but  his  features  were  cold  and 
did  not  promise  an  obedient  temperament.  The 
old  man  looked  at  him  with  eyes  dim  but  shrewd. 

f  Look  you,  Elim ;  your  uncle  is  a  poor  creature, 
but  your  father  is  a  hard  man ;  he  breaks  what 
opposes  him.  Give  way  in  this  matter.  Xenia  is 
jolie  a  croquer ;  and  if  you  do  not  care  for  her,  let 
her  have  her  head ;  she  will  know  how  to  amuse 
herself.' 

£  That  is  not  my  idea  of  marriage,  sir.' 

£  Yours  is  an  alliance,'  said  the  old  Emperor  sig- 
nificantly. 

Othyris  was  silent. 

f  You  have  no  will  of  your  own  ;  we  can  break  it 
if  you  have.  We  can  break  it,'  he  said,  in  a  shrill 
screaming  voice,  being  irritated  by  opposition  ;  and 
he  struck  the  floor  with  his  crutch  so  sharply  that 
Blanchette  turned  her  round  blue  eyes  on  him  in 
alarm  and  skipped  down  from  his  knees. 

Othyris  was  still  silent. 

He  was  thinking  of  how  many  human  wills  had 
been  broken,  like  dry  canes  in  a  north  gale,  by  that 
cruel  old  man  whose  blood  was  in  his  own  veins. 
He  was  thinking  of  the  gangs  of  fettered  prisoners 
driven  across  the  barren  plains  through  snow  and 
storm  ;  of  the  hordes  of  poor  fanatic  peasants  exiled, 
scourged,  starved,  forced  out  into  the  frozen  night, 
and  left  to  perish  un  pitied  under  the  stars  of  the 
extreme  north  ;  of  genius,  of  ideality,  of  heroism, 
of  self-sacrifice  shut  down  under  the  casemates  of 
fortresses ;  of  pregnant  women  beaten  with  rods  as 
ripe  grain  is  threshed  by  flails,  the  young  and  gener- 
ous blood  running  like  the  blood  of  steers  and 
heifers  in  the  conduits  of  shambles.  Yes,  they 


vii  HELIANTHUS  141 

could  break  the  will,  no  doubt,  but  only  by  break- 
ing first  the  cord  of  life. 

1  We  can  break  you  —  break,  break,  break ' 

said  the  old  Emperor  in  a  thin  shrieking  voice,  and 
he  choked  in  his  sudden  wrath,  and  coughed  with  a 
gasping,  rasping  noise  in  his  throat,  and  rang  his 
gold  hand-bell  noisily.  Seychelles,  who  was  always 
within  hearing,  hurried  to  the  rescue  ;  of  all  things 
the  most  to  be  dreaded  was  any  excitement,  any 
agitation,  at  the  great  age  of  the  great  monarch. 

The  marriage  had  been  decided  on  between  Xenia's 
parents  and  John  of  Gunderode  ;  for  no  especial 
reason,  and  in  the  usual  ignorance  which  moves 
royal  races  to  do  that  which  the  owners  of  horses 
and  dogs  most  carefully  avoid,  i.e.  to  breed  in  and 
in,  to  perpetually  cross  and  recross  the  same  stock. 

His  younger  sister,  the  Princess  Euphrosyne,  was 
betrothed  to  the  eldest  son  of  Stephen,  and  it 
seemed  to  both  families  that  the  union  between  him- 
self and  Xenia  would  be  everything  which  could  be 
desired. 

Sooner,  he  thought,  would  he  take  one  of  the 
fisher  girls  of  the  sea  villages  of  the  Helianthine 
coast,  with  their  virginal  grace,  their  goddess-like 
strength  and  simplicity,  their  calm  and  chaste  regard, 
so  like  to  that  of  the  busts  of  Artemis. 

Maitresse  femme  / 

Yes  :  little  Xenia  would  be  that  perhaps  in  time, 
but  she  would  first  be  many  other  things  as  well. 
The  sentinels  at  the  palace  gates  could  not  keep 
out  the  atmosphere  of  the  century. 

A  little  later  he  joined  in  the  gardens  his  many 
cousins,  sons  and  daughters  of  the  heir  to  the  throne, 
who  were  playing  lawn-tennis  in  the  midst  of  an 


i42  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

admiring  circle  of  lords  and  ladies  in  waiting,  tutors, 
governesses,  and  the  other  small  fry  of  a  great  Court. 
Xenia  was  amongst  them,  sixteen  years  old,  using 
her  racket  with  skill  and  decision,  as  like  the  Loulou 
of  Gyp  as  one  cherry  is  like  another ;  for  the  ten- 
dencies of  modern  generations  penetrate  alike  the 
palace  and  the  hovel,  subtle  as  gases,  invisible  and 
irresistible  as  electricity,  corroding  as  acids,  blighting 
youth  even  whilst  it  stimulates  it,  as  the  heat  of  the 
compost  forces  the  flower  and  withers  it. 

*  Savez-vous,  beau  cousin,  vous  etes  monfutur?'  she 
said,  with  impudent  challenge  in  her  bright,  bold 
green-grey  eyes  ;  eyes  like  the  ice  of  her  northern  seas. 

(  Vraiment  ?     J'en  doute  !  '  he  answered  curtly. 

'  On  l'a  decide  / '  she  said  gaily  ;  but  there  was  an 
angry  gleam  in  her  impertinent,  saucy,  malicious 
gaze. 

He  did  not  answer,  but  sent  the  ball  flying  across 
the  net.  She  was  wholly  unattractive  to  him ;  she 
was  even  repulsive ;  this  half-grown  girl,  this  demie- 
vierge,  with  her  bold,  hard  gaze,  her  cynical  pro- 
vocative smile,  her  boyish,  abrupt  address ;  the 
Loulou  of  Gyp,  though  an  Imperial  Highness. 

On  the  morrow  he  had  an  interview,  which  was 
painful  to  both,  with  his  uncle  Stephen.  He  stated 
courteously  but  inflexibly  his  resolution  not  to  marry 
his  young  cousin  ;  indeed,  not  to  marry  at  all.  He 
made  the  statement  as  politely  as  the  nature  of  it 
allowed,  but  of  necessity  it  wounded  and  offended 
his  relative.  Stephen  was  by  no  means  an  unamiable 
man,  but  he  was  one  with  whom  circumstance  had 
always  been  at  variance :  he  had  a  wife  who  ruled 
him,  and  an  old  man  who  treated  him  contumeliously, 
a  heritage  which  escaped  him  like  a  mirage,  and  a 


vii  HELIANTHUS  143 

numerous  family  of  which  all  the  members  gave  him 
constant  anxiety.  He  was  the  kind  of  man  who, 
whether  he  be  king  or  cobbler,  is  every  one's  prey ; 
he  was  kind,  peevish,  lavish,  niggard,  uncertain,  un- 
happy ;  his  courtiers  pillaged  him,  his  wife  ridiculed 
him,  his  children  tormented  him,  his  grandfather 
terrorised  him.  He  was  the  ruler  that  was  to  be ; 
meantime  every  one  ruled  him. 

He  pulled  off  his  blue  glasses  nervously,  and 
beat  a  tattoo  with  them  on  the  blotting-pad  on 
the  writing-table.  The  issue  of  the  conversation 
was  full  of  anxiety  for  him.  He  knew  John  of 
Gunderode  in  every  smallest  detail  of  his  character. 
He  knew  that  although  a  thing  might  be  of  no 
importance  whatsoever,  yet  if  the  King  had  once 
decided  on  that  thing  he  would  never  let  it  go,  or 
alter  his  decision,  even  if  it  should  cost  a  million 
times  its  value.  He  knew  that  his  brother-in-law 
had  the  tenacity  of  the  ferret,  joined  to  that  obsti- 
nate vanity  which  the  human  animal  alone  possesses. 
There  was  no  crevice  of  that  close-shut  mind  into 
which  Stephen  had  not  peered ;  for  he  had  loved 
his  sister,  and  had  studied  profoundly  the  man 
who  had  made  her  unhappiness.  In  addition,  he 
had  studied  his  brother-in-law  with  the  keen  and 
harassing  interest  which  the  debtor  takes  in  the  cred- 
itor. He  had  himself  been  always  poor  in  compari- 
son with  the  immensity  of  his  obligatory  expenditure, 
and  John  of  Gunderode  had  often  rescued  him  from 
embarrassments ;  but  he  knew  very  well  that  the 
motive  of  the  rescue  had  not  been  one  of  friendship 
or  kindness,  but  of  that  shrewd  and  unerring  self- 
interest  which  the  King  brought  into  every  act, 
private  and  public,  of  his  career.  And  now  if  this 


144  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

creditor  were  denied  the  hand  of  Xenia,  which  he 
coveted  for  his  son  because  it  was  well  known  that 
the  old  monarch  would  dower  her  magnificently, 
the  sufferer  would  be  Xenia's  unhappy  father. 

He  did  not  personally  care  about  this  marriage; 
but  his  grandfather  had  desired  it,  and  to  dispute  the 
will  of  the  old  Emperor  seemed  to  him  a  Titanic 
scaling  of  heaven,  certain  to  draw  down  chastisement ; 
his  brother-in-law  also  desired  it,  and  King  John 
was  not  an  agreeable  person  to  thwart.  Moreover, 
it  is  never  flattering  to  a  parent  to  hear  that  alliance 
with  his  daughter  is  undesired.  He  imagined  that 
he  saw  the  illicit  influence  of  the  lawless  loves  of 
Othyris  in  this  withdrawal  of  his  nephew ;  and  that 
supposition  tended  to  make  him  more  offended  than 
he  might  otherwise  have  been. 

t  Surely  you  owe  the  King,  your  father,  obedience?' 
he  said  feebly,  and  with  what  little  dignity  he  possessed. 

Othyris  replied : 

*  I  owe  the  King,  my  father,  obedience,  un- 
doubtedly in  much ;  as  a  soldier,  as  a  son,  as  a 
subject ;  but  only  in  some  matters,  not  in  all. 
Marriage  or  celibacy  are  matters  of  private  life,  of 
personal  choice.  My  father's  rights  stop  short  of 
my  private  life,  of  my  personal  choice.' 

'  I  cannot  admit  that,'  said  his  uncle  nervously, 
and  in  alarm ;  c  you  would  introduce  rebellion  into 
the  sacred  arx  of  the  family.' 

( There  is  one  thing  more  sacred  than  the  family. 
It  is  self-respect,'  replied  Othyris. 

'You  would  imply ' 

( Nothing  that  is  offensive.  I  merely  mean  that 
self-respect  cannot  exist  where  there  is  not  liberty  of 
opinion  and  of  action  in  personal  matters.' 


vii  HELIANTHUS  145 

1  Liberty  !     The  catchword  of  the  canaille  \ ' 

'  Sometimes.  But  nevertheless  the  finest  word  in 
human  language.' 

Stephen  looked  at  him  with  curiosity  through  his 
blue  glasses. 

'  They  accredit  you  with  subversive  opinions. 
Where  did  you  get  their  infection  ? ' 

Othyris  smiled  slightly. 

f  Of  my  opinions  I  can  say  truly  that  they  are  my 
own,  borrowed  from  no  man.' 

*  There  is  nothing  more  dangerous,'  said  his  uncle, 
with  irritable  impatience. 

< Why  so?' 

'  Because  —  because  —  the  person  who  trusts  and 
glories  in  his  own  powers  of  judgment,  defies  au- 
thority and  breaks  loose  from  tradition.  He  be- 
comes a  law  unto  himself.' 

1  Exactly.' 

'  You  think  that  permissible  ? ' 

'  I  think  it  inevitable  if  a  man,  whatever  be  his 
station,  have  any  respect  for  himself.' 

f  You  would  destroy  religion  ! ' 

f  I  would  destroy  superstitions  and  priesthoods.' 

t You  would  destroy  faith,  law,  order!  It  is 
anarchy  !  anarchy  and  chaos  ! '  said  Stephen,  with  a 
nervous  thrill  of  horror  which  shook  his  whole  feeble 
person.  £  I  would  trust  no  daughter  of  mine  to  you. 
Time  will  temper  your  folly,  no  doubt,  and  show 
you  the  error  of  your  ways ;  but  I  would  not  risk 
the  future  of  my  child  in  such  an  experiment.  Can 
you  be  the  son  of  my  beloved  sister,  of  my  dear 
and  faultless  Feodorowna  ? ' 

Othyris  bowed  his  head  reverently  at  his  mother's 
name. 


146  HELIANTHUS  CHAP 

c  Then/  he  said,  after  a  pause,  £  since  we  are  both 
of  accord,  my  dear  uncle,  that  I  am  wholly  unworthy 
of  my  cousin's  hand,  we  will  discuss  and  disagree  no 
more.  I  am  always  your  devoted  servant  and 
nephew;  and  we  are  both  agreed  that  I  could  not 
either  deserve,  or  properly  fill,  any  nearer  relation  to 
you.' 

Poor  Stephen  felt  that  he  had  blundered  stupidly 
in  giving  Othyris  a  chance  of  withdrawal.  What, 
too,  would  his  wife  say  ?  She  also  was  not  easy  to 
reconcile  to  any  departure  from  her  accepted  plans. 
The  proposed  alliance  for  her  youngest  daughter 
pleased  her :  she  considered,  as  every  one  did,  that 
Elim  would  in  all  probability  succeed  eventually  to 
the  throne  of  Helianthus. 

f  But  your  father  ? '  he  said,  with  vacillation 
and  fear.  He  was  keenly  afraid  of  his  brother-in- 
law,  in  whose  coffers  lay  many  of  his  own  signatures. 

f  When  you  and  I  are  of  accord,'  said  Othyris, 
s  my  father,  however  displeased  or  regretful  he  may 
be,  will  be  powerless.' 

*  Of    accord !     You    and    I    are    of    accord    in 
nothing ! ' 

*  In  opinion,  no  ;  but  concerning  my  unworthiness 
of  my  cousin  Xenia's  hand,  yes.' 

The  unfortunate  King  of  Gelum  felt  that  he  had 
been  checkmated,  and  that  further  argument  was 
useless.  The  younger  man  had  been  the  more 
astute. 

Othyris  went  to  his  sleeping-carriage  in  the 
imperial  train,  which  was  to  take  him  to  the  south- 
east frontier,  well  content  with  the  issue  of  the 
interview. 

As    the    train   bore    him    towards    the   frontier, 


vii  HELIANTHUS  147 

he  looked  at  the  still  frozen  plains  over  which 
it  passed,  the  snow-laden  leaden  skies,  the  miser- 
able cabins  blocked  up  and  blotted  out  by  the 
winter's  drifts,  the  starved  cattle  with  bones  piercing 
through  their  hides,  the  wretched  horses  trying  to 
scrape  their  way  to  buried  roots  or  mosses  or  to 
break  the  ice  of  frozen  pools  and  ditches,  the 
peasants  dragging  driftwood  over  the  snow  or 
digging  paths  to  their  churches ;  and  the  sharp 
brutal  contrast  of  this  misery  with  the  splendour  of 
the  scenes  from  which  he  had  come,  hurt  him  as  with 
some  physical  pain.  Ninety-seven  years  of  his  great- 
grandfather's life  had  been  passed  without  the  peace 
and  pleasure  of  the  Father  of  his  People  having  been 
for  an  hour  disturbed  by  this  contrast,  or  his  con- 
science ever  having  been  awakened  by  the  know- 
ledge of  the  ocean  of  misery  rolling  over  these 
plains.  '  God  forgive  us  ! '  thought  Othyris ;  and 
then  even  that  thought  seemed  to  him  a  blasphemy. 
Who  could  believe  in  the  goodness  of  a  God  by  whom 
such  contrasts  had  been  created  between  man  and 
man  ? 

He  returned  home  by  sea,  his  father  having  given 
him  the  mission  of  a  complimentary  visit  to  the 
Ottoman  ruler  who  was  at  that  moment  harrying, 
burning,  pillaging,  massacring,  in  an  adjacent  Chris- 
tian semi- Asiatic  state,  wholly  undisturbed  by  the 
Christian  potentates  of  the  civilised  West.  His 
own  yacht  and  two  war-vessels  awaited  him  at  a 
southern  port.  His  visit  to  the  oriental  potentate 
was  felicitously  concluded,  and  his  homeward  voyage 
was  beautiful  across  the  dark  foaming  inland  sea,  and 
past  the  cypress  woods,  the  ancient  monasteries,  the 
minarets  fine  as  lace  and  lofty  as  fountains,  towards 


148  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

the  famous  city,  lying  like  a  half-moon  on  the  edge 
of  the  waters :  the  city  which  had  been  his  birth- 
place. His  schooner,  with  the  frigates  which  formed 
her  escort  on  this  visit  of  ceremonial,  wound  through 
the  narrow  channels  of  the  passage  which  was  as  a 
bone  amongst  dogs  to  the  western  Powers,  and, 
entering  on  the  Mare  Magnum,  in  due  time  he 
saw  the  long  blue  line  of  the  Helianthine  hills. 

'  My  country  ! '  he  murmured,  with  that  pride  of 
possession  and  humility  of  filial  love,  between  which 
the  patriot's  affection  is  divided.  But  then,  he 
thought,  was  it  in  truth  his  country  ?  Were  hybrids, 
such  as  he  and  his,  truly  the  sons  of  any  land,  with 
any  right  to  say  (  My  race,  my  tongue,  my  country'  ? 
Was  not  the  poorest  peasant  born  on  that  earth, 
under  these  olive-trees,  by  that  sea,  or  on  those  hills, 
more  really  a  son  of  the  soil  than  he,  mongrel  that 
he  was,  with  the  blood  of  many  nationalities  in  him, 
bred  in  and  in,  but  cross-bred  ? 

Helios  was  before  him,  like  a  silver  cup  lying  in 
the  lap  of  the  calm  waters.  It  was  beautiful  as  a 
city  in  a  mirage  seen  by  a  dying  man.  But  there,  on 
the  sea-terraces  of  the  Soleia,  paced  armed  sentinels  ; 
on  the  quays  rode  armed  carabineers ;  in  the  streets 
and  lanes  city  guards  hunted  beggars  and  children 
and  dogs ;  at  the  gates  waited  weary  and  dusty 
cattle,  horses,  mules,  with  their  peasant  drivers 
blocked  in  a  mass,  one  on  another,  whilst  the  Octroi 
officials  ransacked,  weighed,  cursed  and  bullied ;  in 
the  dreary  factories,  with  their  long  lines  of  windows, 
multitudes  toiled  in  the  joyless,  monotonous,  me- 
chanical toil  with  which  modern  inventions  have 
cursed  the  workman  ;  in  the  fortress,  with  its  glori- 
ous angel  trumpeting  to  the  skies,  were  a  hundred 


vii  HELIANTHUS  149 

brazen  mouths  of  cannon  turned  night  and  day  on  to 
the  crowded  quarters  whence  revolution  might  raise 
her  Medusa's  head  ;  and  in  its  arsenals  were  closely 
packed  millions  on  millions  of  cases  of  ammunition 
of  the  newest  and  the  deadliest  sort.  Was  not 
Helios  in  all  her  beauty  like  a  fair  woman  with  a 
cancer  in  her  womb  ? 

He  was  aroused  from  his  meditations  by  the  ap- 
proach towards  his  yacht  of  three  barges,  occupied 
by  a  deputation  of  welcome  from  the  municipality  of 
the  city.  Syndic,  assessors,  councillors,  and  notabil- 
ities were  crowded  on  board  them  in  one  of  those 
servile,  useless,  and  senseless  ceremonies  which  dog 
the  steps  and  poison  the  lives  of  princes,  and  degrade 
the  citizens  concerned  in  them  into  panders,  parrots, 
and  puppets. 

'  I  am  going  back  to  my  harness,'  thought 
Othyris,  as  he  saw  the  scarlet  and  gold  robes  of  the 
Mayor,  gorgeous  in  the  sunlight  of  the  gangway. 
'  Must  you  come  out  to  meet  me  with  the  bit  and 
the  bridle  ?  O  garrulous  and  servile  fools  !  Cannot 
you  spend  your  time  in  the  innumerable  duties  which 
call  to  you  in  vain  ?  Go,  take  your  robes,  and  your 
scarves,  and  your  vellum,  and  your  froth,  and  your 
platitudes,  and  your  protestations  elsewhere.  Be 
men,  not  crawling  sycophants  !' 

He  received  them  with  coldness  and  visible  im- 
patience ;  he  replied  to  their  address  briefly  and 
with  weariness;  his  own  gentlemen  were  surprised 
and  disquieted,  but  the  deputation  did  not  perceive 
that  they  were  unwelcome ;  they  were  surrounded 
by  the  clouds  of  their  own  incense,  giddy  with  the 
gazes  of  their  own  self-adoration  !  Servility  is,  to 
the  servile,  a  self-engendered  gas  which  intoxicates. 


150  HELIANTHUS  CHAP,  vn 

They  were  enamoured  of  their  own  abasement  as 
women  are  of  their  own  petty  vanities.  They  found 
delight  and  honour  even  in  their  own  humiliation. 

His  father  and  his  brothers  took  this  form  of 
sycophancy  seriously,  as  a  meet  attitude  on  the  part 
of  the  public  and  a  correct  obeisance  to  themselves. 
But  Othyris  could  not  do  so.  To  his  temperament 
and  opinions,  his  own  manhood  was  lowered  by  the 
abasement  of  theirs.  A  common  humanity  made 
him  feel  himself  degraded  by  their  miserable  servility. 
They  were  men  well-to-do  in  the  world,  well  fed, 
well  clothed,  well  housed,  well  educated,  as  education 
is  considered  in  modern  life  ;  they  had  no  excuse  for 
their  own  self-chosen  degradation,  for  the  wretched 
self-imposed  prostration  which  they  sought  with 
such  avidity.  It  hurt  the  dignity  of  his  own  self- 
respect  to  see  theirs  so  debased;  but  their  hides 
were  so  thick,  their  vision  so  oblique,  their  paltry 
pride  so  obtuse,  that  they  could  not  even  be  taught 
what  self-respect  meant. 


ON  the  night  of  Elim's  return  from  his  mission, 
which  was  the  eve  of  the  Feast  of  the  Ascension, 
a  roar  as  of  thunder,  but  sounding  duller  and 
slower  as  it  smote  the  ear,  startled  the  sleeping 
population  of  Helios.  An  ancient  building  had 
suddenly  collapsed,  none  knew  from  what  cause ; 
there  was  no  visible  reason  for  its  end ;  the  air  was 
calm,  the  waves  were  peaceful ;  it  had  lived  its  life 
and  fell,  with  no  visible  sign  of  decay  or  of  age  upon 
it.  It  had  stood  there  for  twelve  centuries,  having 
been  erected  during  the  Byzantine  rule  of  the  country. 
The  Ivory  Tower,  or  the  Lily  Tower,  as  it  was  called 
by  the  populace,  was  one  of  the  most  famous  and 
poetic  possessions  of  the  city,  standing  conspicuously 
on  the  north-west  shore  of  the  Bay  of  Helios.  It 
looked  like  one  of  the  porcelain  towers  of  China, 
for  it  was  made  of  bricks  enamelled  white ;  its  form 
had  the  elegance  of  the  minaret;  at  its  base  was  the 
sea,  in  its  rear  a  wood  of  cypress  and  of  laurels. 

The  coast  of  Helianthus  is  never  more  beautiful 
than  by  night.  On  this  night  of  the  Ascension  the 
city,  until  a  late  hour,  was  a  crescent  of  artificial 
light.  The  watch-towers  were  crowned  by  cressets 
of  fires.  The  quays  and  bridges  were  outlined  with 
lamps,  and,  on  the  hills,  many  a  village  and  villa 


152  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

glowed  with  points  aflame,  which  heralded  the  advent 
of  a  religious  feast  in  that  union  of  pagan  and  Christian 
superstitions  which  formed  the  country's  creed.  But 
where  the  Ivory  Tower  had  stood,  and  had  worn  its 
diadem  of  flame  on  all  such  nights  as  this,  there 
was  darkness,  and  the  only  light  came  from  the 
moon-rays  shining  on  a  great  heap  of  dust  and  ashes, 
which  covered  the  rocks  and  shelved  down  into  the 
sea,  like  a  huge  grave,  nameless  and  naked.  Time 
would  bring  to  cover  it  the  short,  sweet  grass,  the 
wild  strawberry  plant,  the  bramble  and  the  dog-rose, 
the  creeping  thistle,  the  sweet-scented  myrtle,  the 
mosses,  the  daisies,  the  gold  of  the  charlock  and 
ragwort ;  but  it  was  now  only  a  mountain  of  dust. 

*  Is  that  all  ? '  said  the  King,  when  he  heard  the 
cause  of  the  sound  which  had  disturbed  his  slumbers. 
*  I  was  afraid  it  was  the  powder  magazine.' 

To  have  lost  even  a  few  caissons  of  melenite 
would  have  seemed  to  him  a  much  greater  calamity 
than  the  ruin  of  any  monument  of  art  or  relic  of 
antiquity. 

The  Ivory  Tower  had  been  a  thing  of  beauty, 
its  whiteness  growing  warm  in  the  golden  glow  of 
sunrise,  its  lofty  and  slender  grace  saluted  by  returning 
mariners  throughout  twelve  centuries,  its  sonorous 
chimes  resounding  through  summer  silence,  and  re- 
buking winter  storm.  It  had  been  kept  in  repair  for 
no  other  reason  than  its  extreme  beauty,  or  what  the 
artistic  world  called  beauty ;  a  great  waste  of  money 
in  the  eyes  of  the  monarch.  For  it  had  been  an 
entirely  useless  thing,  in  the  estimation  of  the  ruler 
of  Helianthus  ;  it  had  never  been  used  as  a  granary, 
as  a  signal  station,  as  an  observatory,  nor  even  as  a 
Christian  house  of  prayer. 


vin  HELIANTHUS  153 

Late  in  the  evening  following  on  its  fall,  Othyris 
went  by  sea  to  view  the  ruins.  During  the  day,  the 
beach  was  crowded  by  throngs  of  townspeople,  visit- 
ing the  site  of  the  disaster,  who  would  have  given 
him  no  peace  had  he  gone  there  by  daylight ;  even 
by  night  it  was  necessary  to  go  very  late  to  avoid 
being  mobbed  by  the  people. 

The  sky  was  lustrous  with  that  radiance  which 
the  King  would  have  considered  so  inferior  to  that 
of  a  searchlight.  The  moon  was  at  the  full,  and 
Jove  and  Saturn  were  low  on  the  southern  horizon, 
but  Antares  and  Arcturus  shone,  higher  in  the 
heavens,  in  all  their  solar  splendour  and  their  menac- 
ing mystery. 

f  Happy  those  simple  souls  to  whom  the  stars  and 
planets  are  only  lamps  to  steer  by,  hung  up  by  the 
hand  of  God,'  thought  Othyris,  as  a  fishing-boat 
passed  him  leaning  low  down  in  the  trough  of  the 
phosphorescent  water. 

When  he  went  ashore  with  one  of  his  gentlemen, 
he  felt  as  if  he  stood  by  the  grave  of  a  friend.  The 
vast  pile  of  ruined  bricks  and  shattered  enamels 
covered  a  wide  area  of  the  rocks,  and  the  base  was 
washed  by  the  white,  moonlit,  rippling  surge. 

1  If  let  alone,'  he  thought,  c  in  half  a  century  the 
ruin  will  be  a  green  hill.  Nature  will  have  clothed 
it.  Let  us  leave  it  alone.' 

The  light  from  the  round,  golden  moon  was 
strong  ;  it  shone  on  the  face  and  form  of  a  woman 
who  was  standing  on  a  strip  of  beach  which  had  been 
left  untouched  by  the  fallen  materials.  She  was 
clothed  in  black,  and  wore  a  black  veil  upon  her 
head,  after  the  manner  of  the  women  of  the  populace; 
she  was  young,  and  her  profile  was  like  that  of  the 


i54  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

Athene  ;  as  she  gazed  upward  it  looked  pure  and 
clear  as  a  cameo ;  the  nose  straight,  the  upper  lip 
short,  the  eyelashes  long,  the  throat  white  and  fine 
as  in  sculpture. 

*  I  have  never  seen  her,'  thought  Othyris.     '  She 
is  dressed  like  a  woman  of  the  people ;  but  her  face 
and  her  form  are  those  of  a  goddess.' 

She  did  not  notice  him ;  she  was  absorbed  in  the 
spectacle  of  the  ruin  before  her. 

'  Oh,  the  pity  of  it ! '  she  murmured,  and  her  eyes 
were  full  of  tears. 

Othyris  uncovered  his  head. 

1  The  pity  of  it,  indeed  ! '  he  said. 

She  started,  astonished  to  find  any  one  so  near,  and 
her  exclamation  overheard ;  she  drew  her  veil  more 
closely  so  as  to  conceal  her  features,  and  turned  to 
leave  the  spot. 

s  I  come,  Janos  ! '  she  cried  to  a  man  in  a  rowing- 
boat  below. 

*  Let  me  not  drive  you  away,'  murmured  Othyris. 
*  We  have  a  common  sorrow.' 

But  she  did  not  answer  or  look  back ;  she  went 
on  swiftly,  noiselessly,  with  gliding  grace  along  the 
strip  of  beach  to  where  the  boat  waited  in  the 
surf. 

£  Shall  I  make  inquiries,  sir  ? '  murmured  the 
courtier  who  accompanied  Othyris.  He  had  been 
before  then  sent  on  errands  of  identification. 

£  No,  no,  on  no  account  whatever,'  said  Othyris 
quickly.  The  little  boat  with  the  woman  and  the 
peasant  was  being  sculled  into  deeper  water,  going 
outward  and  westward ;  it  made  a  black  shadow 
on  the  silvery  spaces  of  the  moonlit  sea  for  a  while, 
then  passed  away  into  shadow  and  distance,  and  was 


vin  HELIANTHUS 


155 


lost  to  sight.  Was  she  the  diva  loca  of  the  ruined 
shrine  driven  out  into  exile  ?  The  fancy  pleased 
Othyris. 

He  took  out  the  little  sketch-book  of  silver  point 
which  he  always  carried  with  him,  and  drew  her  pro- 
file from  memory  by  the  light  of  the  moon. 

Her  memory  haunted  Othyris,  brief  as  had  been 
the  passage  of  her  swift  and  silent  steps  over  the 
smooth  sea-sand.  He  smiled  at  his  own  preoccupa- 
tion :  truly,  she  had  looked  like  a  goddess  drawn 
out  from  her  sanctuary  and  not  deigning  longer  to 
remain  on  earth. 

f  I  am  a  fanciful  fool/  he  said  to  himself;  but  was 
it  not  better  to  feed  on  such  fancies  than  to  be 
drugged  with  absinthe,  or  to  be  drunk  with  war? 
At  least  his  fancies  harmed  no  one,  and  cost  nothing 
to  the  lives  and  to  the  savings  of  the  nation. 

She  had  gone  away  across  the  moonlit  water  into 
the  shadows  where  the  sea  was  dark ;  it  was  fitting 
that  a  divinity  whose  altars  were  in  ruins  should  so 
pass  away  from  the  sight  of  a  mere  mortal ! 

'  I  think,  sir,  that  the  man  who  was  rowing  is  a 
peasant  of  the  Helichrysum  hills,  whom  I  have  seen 
in  the  market,'  murmured  Sir  Pandarus,  behind  him 
on  the  beach.  Othyris  silenced  him  with  a  gesture. 

Officious  readiness  in  others  to  wait  on  his  less 
noble  desires  had  always  aroused  in  him  a  strong 
disgust. 

*  That  the  fox  eats  the  dove  is  bad  enough,'  he 
said  once ;  '  but  that  lesser  beasts  should  track  and 
trap  the  doves,  and  bring  them  as  offerings  to  the 
fox,  is  much  worse.' 

Othyris   did   not   forget   the   casta   diva   of  the 


156  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

moonlit  eve  before  the  ruins  of  the  Ivory  Tower ; 
probably  because  she  was  the  only  woman  who  had 
ever  eluded  him.  She  was  also  of  a  wholly  different 
type  from  any  he  had  ever  seen,  and  he  had  believed 
that  he  had  seen  every  variety  of  class  and  breeding, 
of  form  and  feature,  in  the  sex.  He  could  not  assign 
her  rank  with  any  certainty.  She  had  possessed 
the  bearing  of  a  patrician,  the  simplicity  of  a 
peasant,  the  placid  grace  of  a  goddess,  the  shyness  of 
a  startled  nymph.  She  had  fled  from  him  over  the 
sands  like  any  Daphne  from  the  Sun-god. 

He  realised  Montaigne's  truism,  f  ettes  nous  battent 
mieux  en  fuyant  comme  les  Scythes?  He  spent 
hours  in  the  endeavour  to  record  the  vision  of  her, 
but  he  never  succeeded  in  contenting  himself.  There 
were  many  hundreds  of  women  in  Helios  who  wore 
that  severe  nun-like  costume,  with  the  black  veil, 
which  at  will  could  so  successfully  conceal  the 
features.  The  lowest  female  classes  were  gay 
with  colour  as  a  butterfly  or  a  tulip ;  but  the 
industrial  classes,  the  grades  between  the  populace 
and  the  middle  classes,  invariably  wore  the  black 
veil  and  the  black  skirt,  as  she  had  done,  and  under 
the  protection  of  that  sombre  garb  could  pass  un- 
molested from  one  end  to  the  other  of  the  city.  Yet 
he  did  not  think  that  she  belonged  to  that  class  ;  the 
uncovered  hand  which  had  drawn  together  the  folds 
of  the  veil  was  of  fine  and  delicate  shape,  and  the 
outline  of  her  profile  and  throat  had  the  purity  of 
a  classic  cameo. 

But  he  knew  that  there  were  many  old  families, 
once  patrician  but  now  poor  and  obscure,  who  dwelt 
in  the  small  coast-towns  or  in  the  recesses  of  the  hills 
above;  families  of  ancient  lineage,  of  proud  traditions, 


vin  HELIANTHUS  157 

of  strong  prejudices,  of  uncomplaining  poverty.  She 
must,  he  thought,  belong  to  one  of  those,  and  have 
been  drawn  out  of  her  privacy  by  the  loss  of  the 
Ivory  Tower,  which  was  so  great  a  calamity  to  those 
who  loved  the  old  heroic  past  of  Helianthus.  Othyris 
knew  nothing  of  those  families,  but  he  had  always 
felt  a  great  respect  for  them,  beggared  as  they  had 
been  by  the  War  of  Independence,  faithful  to  their 
traditions,  and  irreconcilable  with  what  was  to  them 
a  foreign  monarchy,  content  to  live  in  obscurity  and 
penury,  and  unpurchasable  by  place  or  money  ;  they 
were  the  last  remnant  of  the  old  republican  and 
patriotic  substratum  of  the  country. 

Again  and  again  he  felt  tempted  to  set  some  of 
the  many  panderers  to  his  caprices  on  her  quest; 
but  he  never  took  the  decisive  step.  He  felt  as 
though  it  would  be  profanity.  The  likeness  he  had 
drawn  of  her  from  memory,  her  face  and  throat 
alone  bathed  in  a  flood  of  moonlight,  seemed  to  say 
to  him,  f  Let  me  be.  I  have  given  you  an  ideal.  Is 
not  that  much  in  this  world  ? ' 

It  stood  on  an  ebony  easel,  and  he  had  fresh 
flowers  set  before  it  as  on  an  altar.  A  sentimental 
folly,  he  knew,  or  so  at  least  it  would  have  seemed 
to  other  men ;  but  was  it  not  of  such  fancies  that 
the  grace  and  charm  of  the  most  innocent  affections 
were  made  ? 

To  Othyris,  who  had  been  satiated  by  affections 
far  from  innocent,  there  was  an  infinite  attraction  in 
this  illusive  and  spiritual  beauty. 

1  That  is  a  beautiful  head,'  said  Gavroche,  one  day. 
*  Who  is  the  original  ? ' 

'  It  is  a  Helianthine  divinity,'  replied  Othyris. 
f  It  is  a  diva  ignota.  I  know  not  her  name. ' 


158  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

Tyras  for  once  did  not  grin  with  his  usual  satyr's 
smile. 

*  Whoever  she  is,  she  is  too  good  for  mortal  em- 
braces/ he  said.     '  What  a  fine  artist  you  might  be 
if  you  chose,  Elim  ;    and  how  well  you  keep  your 
own  counsel !    My  secrets  slip  out  when  I  am  drunk.' 

There  was,  of  course,  an  immediate  agitation  in 
the  city  for  the  rebuilding  of  the  Ivory  Tower. 
There  are  always  numbers  of  people  who  are  ready 
to  profit  in  various  ways  by  a  public  calamity. 

*  It  can  never  be  rebuilt,'  said  Othyris,  to  those 
who  approached  him  on  the  subject. 

Every  one  was  astonished  at  such  an  impression  in 
a  lover  of  the  arts ;  that  he  should  say  so  surprised 
even  his  father. 

1  What  do  you  mean  ?  Why  cannot  it  be  rebuilt  ? ' 
he  asked.  c  Do  you  mean  that  the  foundations  have 
subsided  ?  That  the  rocks  are  unsound  ?  * 

f  No,  sir,'  replied  his  son. 

'  What  do  you  mean,  then  ? ' 

*  I  mean  that  there  is  no  longer  amongst  men  the 
mental    or  moral   power  to  produce   such  a  thing. 
There  is  no  longer  the  reverence,  the  patience,  or 
the  devotion  necessary.' 

The  King  twirled  his  moustaches  with  unutterable 
contempt. 

*  I  supposed  you  meant  some  practical  obstacle  ! 
If  the  resources  of  modern  invention  are  not  equal  to 
renew  the  constructions  of  ignorant  ages,  progress  is 
vain.' 

*  It  is  vain  indeed,  sir,'  said  his  son. 

This  seemed  so  preposterous  to  his  father  that  he 
had  scarcely  patience  to  continue  the  conversation. 


VIII 


HELIANTHUS  159 


c  Vain  —  vain  ? '  he  muttered  angrily.  *  With  the 
immense  resources  of  modern  mechanical  and  hy- 
draulic power  it  would  certainly  be  very  easy  to ' 

He  left  the  sentence,  as  he  left  most  of  his  phrases, 
to  complete  itself  in  the  superior  eloquence  of 
silence. 

f  Something  would  no  doubt  be  erected  in  five  years, 
in  ten,  in  twenty,'  replied  Othyris.  f  But  it  would 
not  be  that  which  we  have  lost.  The  Ivory  Tower 
of  Isma  was  one  of  the  artistic  marvels  of  the  world  ; 
a  hundred  and  seventy  years  were  occupied  in  the 
building  of  it ;  that  is  proved  by  the  Coptic  manu- 
scripts of  the  Ismaian  monastery.' 

His  father  by  a  puff  of  smoke  indicated  the  value 
of  such  statements  in  his  sight. 

'  Because  all  the  materials  were  brought  by  rowers, 
in  galleys,  and  were  carried  up  on  slaves'  shoulders, 
as  the  bricks  were  for  the  Pharaohs'  Pyramids,'  said 
the  King,  with  the  profound  contempt  which  he  felt 
for  such  primitive  means.  c  A  hundred  or  more 
steam-tugs  would  bring  all  the  substances  to  be  used, 
to-day,  direct  from  the  quarries  or  the  foundries  by 
water ;  and  high-pressure  engines  would  at  once 
raise  them  into  position.' 

Othyris  was  silent. 

c  That  is,  if  it  be  worth  while  to  rebuild  a  mere 
belfry  ? '  added  his  father.  c  The  public  seem  to 
desire  some  newer  kind  of  erection.  I  have  sug- 
gested a  lighthouse.' 

O  O 

f  With  an  electric  lantern,  revolving  behind  red 
glass  ? ' 

c  Precisely,'  said  the  monarch,  who  approved  the 
suggestion,  but  was  suspicious  of  the  sarcastic  tone 
in  which  it  was  uttered. 


160  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

'Your  wishes,  sir,  will  of  course  be  law  to  the 
Committee,'  said  Othyris. 

(  Humph  ! '  said  the  King.     £  You  are  not  on  it  ? ' 

'  No,  sir,  I  declined  to  be  so.' 

<  Why  ? ' 

f  Because  I  should  be  unquestionably  in  a  minority; 
a  minority  perhaps  of  one.' 

'  Because  you  would  oppose  those  who  will  be  rep- 
resentative of  my  views  ? ' 

f  It  is  because  I  could  not  venture  to  do  so,  sir, 
and  because  I  could  not  either  dissemble  my  own 
views,  that  I  have  requested  them  not  to  place  my 
name  on  the  Committee.  I  ventured  to  do  this 
without  referring  so  small  a  matter  to  your  Majesty.' 

f  If  I  order  you  to  assume  the  chairmanship  of 
the  Committee  ? '  he  said,  after  a  pause. 

'  I  must  no  'doubt  obey ;  but  I  would  entreat 
your  Majesty  not  to  place  me  in  the  painful  position 
of  being  compelled  to  dissent  publicly  from  views 
which  are  known  to  be  favoured  by  yourself.' 

The  King  made  a  guttural  exclamation,  rendered 
unintelligible  by  his  teeth  being  closed  on  his  cigarette. 
He  lighted  a  fresh  one,  and  dismissed  his  son  and 
the  subject. 

He  would  have  had  great  pleasure  in  placing 
Elim  in  that  or  any  other  difficult  position,  but  he 
felt  that  the  finesse  and  the  obstinacy  of  his  son 
would  be  more  than  a  match  for  his  own ;  they  had 
been  so  before  then. 

He  felt  that  Elim's  deference  and  obedience 
went  just  so  far  as  Elim's  own  convictions  went  of 
what  was  due  from  him,  and  incumbent  upon  him, 
and  went  no  farther  ;  and  that  any  attempt  at  coercion 
would  always  and  irrevocably  fail.  Elim  was  a  fool 


vin  HELIANTHUS  161 

in  many  ways,  his  father  thought,  but  there  was  grit 
in  him. 

It  was  this  in  Othyris  which  beyond  all  other 
things  incensed  the  King ;  this  deference  in  form  and 
tone,  coupled  with  opposition  in  reality.  He  had 
rarely  been  able  to  accuse  his  second  son  of  any  want 
of  deference  either  in  manner  or  in  act ;  yet  he  was 
always  conscious  of  an  actual  independence  of  judg- 
ment which  entirely  escaped  him. 

'It  was  the  training  of  that  beast  Basil  which 
made  him  like  this,'  he  thought  now,  as  Othyris 
withdrew.  He  had  never  disliked  any  one  more 
than  his  brother-in-law  Basil,  who  had,  he  thought, 
thwarted  and  irritated  him  throughout  life,  and  after 
death  still  annoyed  him  perpetually  through  that  vast 
fortune,  which  by  its  bequest  made  its  present  pos- 
sessor so  largely  independent  of  him. 

He  had  not  patience  to  pursue  the  subject  with 
his  son ;  but  when  the  Minister  of  Fine  Arts  next 
had  audience  with  him,  and  ventured  to  speak  of  the 
matter,  he  suggested  to  that  harassed  and  bewildered 
official  that  an  iron  lighthouse  should  be  erected  in 
place  of  the  perished  tower. 

( If  you  try  to  renew  the  past  you  will  please 
nobody,'  he  said ;  and  in  this  he  was  correct.  (  Be 
frankly  utilitarian  ;  you  will  at  least  please  utilitarians. 
The  tower  was  a  beautiful  thing,  or  at  least  people 
said  so,  but  it  was  absolutely  useless.  Replace  it  by 
something  without  beauty,  but  useful.' 

The  Minister  of  Fine  Arts  felt  that  he  himself 
and  his  Department  must  be  equally  useless  in  the 
estimation  of  his  sovereign. 


CHAPTER   IX 

A  FEW  days  later  Othyris  had  to  preside  at  a 
charity  meeting  in  Helios  for  the  relief  of  the 
famine  and  general  distress  in  the  country.  To  speak 
in  public  was  always  disagreeable  to  him  ;  and  this 
kind  of  gathering  never  found  any  favour  in  his  sight. 
He  disbelieved  in  its  efficiency  as  a  means  of  doing 
good,  and  he  thought  the  boastful  philanthropy 
which  set  it  on  foot  rather  more  discreditable  than 
no  philanthropy  at  all.  He  knew  that  most  of  those 
present  would  go  to  see  himself;  would  offer  their 
donations  because  they  desired  to  look  well  in  his 
sight ;  and  that  nine-tenths  of  the  crowd  gathered 
there  would  care  no  more  for  the  sufferings  of  the 
dying  and  the  dead  by  hunger,  cold,  and  misery, 
than  a  gourmet  cares  for  the  sufferings  of  the  craw- 
fish or  the  turtle  which  give  him  his  patties  and  his 
soup  at  dinner. 

f  It  is  waste  of  words,  waste  of  breath,  waste  of 
wrath,'  he  thought,  as  he  rose  to  speak,  and  he  knew 
that  what  he  was  about  to  say  would  be  hateful  to 
his  hearers. 

1  Gentlemen,'  said  Othyris,  after  the  usual  greetings 
of  courtesy,  the  statistics  of  lives  and  deaths,  and  the 
calculation  of  required  monies,  and  the  necessary 
accompaniment  of  conventional  phrases  without 

162 


CHAP,  ix  HELIANTHUS  163 

which  no  public  meeting  would  be  orthodox  or  even 
possible,  — c  Gentlemen,  what  can  be  said  of  these 
modern  civilisations  of  which  modern  language 
boasts  so  greatly  ?  The  world  is  rich,  exceedingly 
rich ;  for  waste,  for  pomp,  for  display,  for  self- 
indulgence,  for  armaments  of  all  kinds,  millions, 
billions,  trillions,  are  always  accumulating,  always 
forthcoming.  Yet  men  and  women  and  children  are 
found  dead  of  hunger  in  every  land,  from  the  snow 
plains  of  the  Septentriones  to  our  own  classic  hills  of 
Helianthus,  from  the  crowded  cities  of  Europe  to 
the  rice-fields  of  the  East  and  the  gold-fields  of  the 
West.  What  progress  can  be  alleged  whilst  famine 
stalks  through  every  quarter  of  the  globe  ?  Whilst 
you  and  I  eat  rich  food  three  times  a  day,  and  rare 
birds  and  beasts  are  paid  their  weight  in  bullion  that 
they  may  pass  into  our  kitchens,  human  beings, 
ofttimes  through  no  fault  of  their  own,  suffer  the 
torture  of  hunger  through  days  and  weeks  and 
months,  then  drop  down  and  die,  worn  out  by  the 
unequal  struggle. 

(  You  will  reply  that  this  is  inevitable ;  that  it  is 
the  fault  of  no  person  and  of  no  system  ;  that  it  is 
the  natural  result  of  laws  beyond  men's  control,  that 
the  successful  wax  fat,  and  the  obscure  perish  for 
want  of  what  they  have  not  had  luck,  or  talent,  or 
perhaps  dishonesty  enough,  to  gain. 

*  Gentlemen,  it  is  in  this  reply,  the  usual,  the 
orthodox,  the  stereotyped  reply  of  both  the  capitalist 
and  the  political  economist,  that  the  condemnation 
of  modern  civilisation  lies.  Civilisation  has  solved 
no  one  of  the  problems  of  life.  It  has  overfed  the 
minority  ;  it  has  underfed  the  majority  ;  and  a  large 
proportion  it  has  not  fed  at  all. 


164  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

f  Victor  Hugo,  in  one  of  his  sonorous  but  fallacious 
phrases,  has  said  :  "  He  who  opens  a  school  closes  a 
prison."  This  sounds  well  and  means  nothing. 
The  ill-digested  and  desultory  education  of  the  day 
is  the  recruiting  sergeant  of  the  gaols.  That  educa- 
tion is  alone  healthy  and  profitable  which  tends  to 
make  the  human  creature  do  well  what  necessity  and 
circumstances  require  him  to  do  at  all.  But  although 
the  technical  schools  may,  perhaps,  do  this  techni- 
cally, general  education,  early  education,  do  nothing 
of  the  kind  ;  morally,  the  education  of  the  schools  is 
neutral  where  it  is  not  mischievous. 

4  In  a  great  nation  overseas,  where  the  govern- 
ment is  nominally  democratic,  where  education  is 
general  and  enforced,  and  where  every  child  can 
read  and  write,  lynch  law  is  the  frequent  redresser  of 
injuries,  and  mobs  burn  accused  persons  alive  and 
without  trial :  what  has  education  done  for  humanity 
in  that  great  nation  ?  You  will  say  that  there  good 
food  has  been  of  no  use,  for  the  lynching  mobs  are 
for  the  most  part  recruited  from  well-fed  persons ; 
but  they  drink  still  more  than  they  eat  —  and  drink, 
the  curse  of  man,  is  in  one  form  or  another  almost 
universal  in  that  hemisphere.  In  all  the  nations  of 
our  own  hemisphere  drinking  and  hunger  reign  side 
by  side.  Called  absinthe,  or  beer,  or  brandy,  or 
wine,  or  gin,  or  what  it  may,  it  fills  with  its  worship- 
pers the  clubs,  the  music  halls,  the  cafes,  the  cellars, 
the  public-houses,  the  boulevards.  Of  what  use  is 
civilisation  ?  It  does  not  turn  away  one  man  in  a 
million  from  the  threshold  of  the  drinking  shops. 
The  children's  bread  is  given  away  to  buy  the  poison 
of  chemically  prepared  toxines  for  their  fathers  and, 
alas !  too  often  for  their  mothers  also. 


ix  HELIANTHUS  165 

*  There  is  a  country  well  known  to  us  all,  lying  on 
cool  northerly  waters,  great  in  story,  strong  in  enter- 
prise, foremost  in  commerce ;  she  was  a  mere  bar- 
barian when  Helianthus  was  the  glory  of  the    arts 
and  the  Venus  Victrix  of  the  then  known  world ; 
now  she  is    far    greater  than    we    are.     Yet  in  her 
metropolis,  the  largest  and  the  richest  of  the  world, 
miles  on  miles  of  streets  are  occupied  by  what  in  her 
language    are    called    gin-palaces ;    crowded    every 
night  of  the  year  by  half-mad  throngs  of  men  and 
women  of  the  people,  insane  with  drink  and  spend- 
ing their  last  coin  upon  it.     Yet  she  presumes  to 
send    out    her    religious    envoys    to    convert   the 
heathen ! 

*  Gentlemen,  there  are  other  cancers  in  the  body 
politic  of  which  it  would  take  many  hours  to  make 
the  diagnosis.     Take  one  only  :  the  deadly  trades. 
Many  trades  exist,  enrich  the  manufacturer,  and  con- 
tribute to  the  comfort  or  the  luxury  of  society,  in 
the    pursuit  of  which    the     man    or   woman    em- 
ployed in  them  dies  almost  certainly  before  reaching 
his  or  her  thirty-fifth  year.     Reflect  upon  this  fact. 
Do    you    seriously    think   that  the  capitalists   who 
make    their    fortune    by    trades    which    cause    this 
mortality  amongst  the  workers  are  really  so  greatly 
superior  to  the  Helianthine  of  two  thousand  years 
ago,    who    killed    a    slave    to    feed  the  fish  of  his 
piscina  ? 

'  You  murmur  ?     Well,  sirs,  reflect  instead. 

{  In  the  course  of  last  year  I  visited  our  classic 
and  romantic  island  of  Philyra,  daughter  of  Oceanus, 
nourished  on  sun  and  sea  and  burning  lava,  as  she 
has  been  from  all  time.  I  saw  the  chief  sulphur 
mines  of  the  isle.  I  need  not  remind  you,  sirs,  of 


i66  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

the  many  and  precious  uses  to  which  sulphur  is  put ; 
or  that  the  sulphur  of  Philyra  is  esteemed  the  best 
in  the  world.  Has  it  ever  occurred  to  you  to  ask 
how  that  sulphur  is  obtained  ?  It  is  chiefly  obtained 
through  the  labour  of  young  children,  whose  eyes 
smart  and  grow  blind  under  the  stinging  irritation 
of  the  mineral  they  carry  up  and  down  the  ladders 
all  day  long.  Was  it  worse,  gentlemen,  to  sell  for 
slaves  the  fair-haired  children  of  the  conquered 
barbarians  here  in  the  market-place  of  Helios  ?  I 
doubt  it.  These  children  are  slaves;  they  cannot 
escape  from  their  lot ;  they  are  as  helpless  as  their 
sisters  sold  for  a  trifle  to  follow  their  foreign  buyer 
into  the  cities  of  other  lands  to  gain  money  for  him 
by  their  suffering  and  debasement.  All  these  young 
and  innocent  lives  are  mercilessly  sacrificed  to  the 
interests  of  others.  One  can  do  no  more  for  them 
than  for  slaves ;  they  are  slaves  in  all  except  the 
name.  What  faces  one?  A  vested  interest;  the 
force  of  commerce  ;  the  might  of  trade. 

f  Sulphur  is  of  great  utility  —  of  more  utility  than 
such  children's  lives.  It  must  be  procured  in  the 
cheapest  way  possible.  The  cheapest  way  is 
to  use  children.  What  can  I  do  to  save  them  ? 
Nothing.  Nothing  more  than  I  can  do  to  stop  the 
seismic  convulsions  in  the  bowels  of  the  earth. 
I  may  call  meetings,  upbraid  their  employers,  rebuke 
their  parents,  call  on  the  Press  to  rouse  the  public. 
What  use  is  what  I  do  ?  It  is  none.  Regulations 
are  made,  leading  articles  are  written,  ladies  weep, 
orators  declaim,  and  then  it  all — the  misery  of  it  — 
goes  back  into  the  same  groove.  Trades  must  not 
be  interfered  with  ;  commerce  must  not  be  ham- 
pered ;  sulphur  must  not  be  made  dear. 


ix  HELIANTHUS  167 

f  It  is  one  of  the  chief  supports  of  the  trade  of 
Helianthus.  Brigs  and  merchantmen  carry  it  out  of 
our  ports  all  over  the  world.  It  has  innumerable 
uses,  immeasurable  values;  and  the  children — who 
have  no  value,  for  there  are  so  many  of  them  —  the 
children  must  pass  and  perish.  Gentlemen,  what  is 
a  civilisation  worth  in  which  such  things  are  possible, 
are  indeed  of  habitual  occurrence,  of  accepted  usage  ? 
Sirs,  I  doubt  greatly  whether  the  greatest  criminal 
amongst  us  is  the  criminal  who  meets  his  fate  in  the 
prisoner's  dock,  and  not  the  rich  and  prosperous 
person  who,  seated  in  his  arm-chair,  signs  his 
cheques  with  his  gold  pen,  eats  and  drinks,  and 
enjoys  and  praises  this  world  as  the  most  admi- 
rable issue  of  the  intellect  of  man  and  of  the  will 
of  God. 

*  It  is  impossible  for  the  governing  classes  to  have 
influence  on  the  governed,  because  our  morality  (or 
the  self-interest  which  we  substitute  for  it)  is  a  mass 
of  contradictions,  a  chaotic  jumble  of  anomalies. 
We  condemn  murder,  but  we  deify  war.  We  kill 
the  criminal  who  poisons  one  person  ;  we  do  not 
touch  the  manufacturer  who  poisons  many  workmen. 
We  condemn  theft,  but  we  approve  annexation. 
We  punish  a  carter  cruel  to  his  horse ;  we  applaud  a 
general  who  kills  two  hundred  thousand  horses. 
We  imprison  the  drover  who  wounds  a  bullock  ;  we 
decorate  the  contractor  who  tortures  on  land  and  sea 
a  million  of  cattle.  We  abhor  alcohol  in  the  throats 
of  the  poor ;  we  find  it  a  perfume  in  the  mouths  of 
the  rich.  We  worship  education,  and  we  leave  chil- 
dren to  be  prostituted  in  brothels  and  worked  to 
death  in  mines.  We  imprison  the  cut-purse ;  we 
honour  and  decorate  the  usurer.  We  have  no  clear 


168  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

knowledge,  or  consistent  treatment  of  crime.  When 
it  is  naked  and  isolated,  we  punish  it  savagely  ;  when 
it  is  cloaked,  and  goes  in  well-armed  companies,  we 
do  not  dare  to  touch  it ;  we  take  off  our  hats  to  it, 
we  seat  it  in  our  banqueting-halls. 

'You  will  say  that  this  has  always  been  so  in  all 
ages.  Perhaps  that  is  the  reason  why  crime  has  al- 
ways been  general. 

1  It  is  impossible  for  the  masses  to  be  impressed  by 
rulers  and  teachers  who,  whatever  their  theories,  do 
in  practice  show  that  crime  is,  in  their  code,  no  crime 
at  all  if  it  be  large  enough  and  successful  enough  to 
dominate  its  generation.  The  multitude  does  not 
reason,  but  it  perceives,  if  slowly  ;  it  feels,  if  dully  ; 
it  is  stirred,  if  obscurely  ;  and  is  guided  by  conclusions 
which  it  draws  by  blind  instinct,  as  the  mollusc  sucks 
in  sea-water  and  sunlight.  It  is  unconsciously 
penetrated  by  a  sense  of  the  untruth  and  the  hy- 
pocrisy of  the  morality  which  is  preached  to  it,  and 
of  the  laws  which  are  laid  down  for  it.  For  that 
reason  the  one  has  little  influence  on  it,  and  the  other 
has  little  awe  for  it ;  and  after  thousands  of  years  of 
various  kinds  of  successive  civilisations  and  of  con- 
tradictory religions,  we  see  that  the  political  and 
social  forces  of  the  world  are  absolutely  impotent, 
either  to  prevent  crimes,  or  to  lead  criminals  back  to 
virtue.  The  fault  lies  more  with  the  rulers  than 
with  the  ruled.' 

A  dead  silence  followed  on  his  concluding  words. 
They  were  all  thinking:  'If  he  should  ever  be  king, 
good  Lord,  deliver  us  ! ' 

His  speech  grated  on  the  nerves  of  his  hearers  ; 
for  the  most  part,  they  felt  that  it  was  unjust  to  be 
summoned  by  a  chairman  who  was  a  prince  of  the 


ix  HELIANTHUS  169 

reigning  House,  and  then  be  made  to  listen  to  a  dis- 
course worthy  of  a  Liebknecht  or  a  Karl  Marx. 

The  enunciation  of  such  opinions  made  a  lively 
sensation  in  Helios,  and  caused  a  great  scandal  in 
society.  Nothing  is  so  dangerous  or  so  detested  as 
an  attack  on  vested  interests.  All  the  superior 
classes,  all  the  users  of  gold  pens,  all  the  comfortable 
and  complacent  persons  to  whom  civilisation  was  a 
Bona  Dea,  mother  of  prosperity,  of  invention,  of 
luxury  and  of  good  government,  felt  themselves  out- 
raged in  their  most  sacred  sentiments. 

A  cancer  in  the  milk-white  breast  of  their  god- 
dess !  What  blasphemy  ! 

Any  other  orator  than  a  son  of  the  King  would 
have  been  howled  down  into  silence  at  the  first 
word. 

On  nepreche  quaux  converts.  Othyris  knew  that. 
He  knew  that  respect  for  his  rank  alone  restrained 
his  hearers  from  comments  far  from  complimentary 
to  him;  he  read  their  astonishment  and  their  dis- 
approbation on  their  features,  beneath  the  surface- 
smiles  of  courteous  urbanity ;  he  was  well  aware 
what  inane  self-complacency  he  had  troubled  and 
startled. 

The  reports  by  stenographers  of  this  speech, 
which  so  entirely  offended  all  prosperity  and  af- 
fronted privilege,  were  by  superior  order  withdrawn 
from  publication  in  the  Press,  and  a  few  common- 
place words  were  substituted  for  it  in  all  reports  of 
the  meeting. 

The  suppression  made  the  Ministry  nervous. 
They  did  not  care  to  offend  a  person  who  was  so 
nearly  in  direct  succession  to  the  throne ;  but  the 
actual  occupant  of  the  throne  had  crossed  out 


170  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

heavily  with  a  red  pencil  the  proofs  of  the  speech 
when  submitted  to  him  and  had  ordered  its  entire 
suppression,  and  no  resistance  was  possible. 

c  That  you  suppressed  my  speech  was  a  matter  of 
course,'  said  Othyris,  when  he  next  met  Michael 
Soranis,  who  had  succeeded  Kantakuzene  as  Prime 
Minister  when  the  latter  was  defeated  over  the 
scheme  for  the  fortification  of  the  Hundred  Isles. 
*  But  I  think  you  should  not  have  put  other  words 
into  my  mouth.  Mon  verre  est  -petit ,  mais  je  bois 
dans  won  verre.' 

'  But  your  Royal  Highness  makes  others  drink, 
alas  ! '  murmured  with  a  sigh  the  harassed  politician. 

*  Do  I  make  others  drink  ? '  wondered  Othyris,  as 
he  passed  onward  across  the  great  courtyard  of  the 
House  of  Deputies.  He  did  not  think  so.  It  is 
very  hard  to  make  others  drink,  unless  they  have  a 
taste  for  the  draught  you  offer,  and  in  that  case  they 
get  it  without  you. 

The  Crown  Prince  was,  of  course,  greatly 
scandalised  at  the  speech.  f  It  is  a  direct  incitement 
to  the  poor  to  plunder  the  rich,'  he  said  with  horror. 
c  What  would  he  propose  instead  of  the  labour  of 
the  poor  if  that  were  abolished  ?  Everything  is 
done  which  can  be  done  to  diminish  the  evil  effects 
of  the  deadly  trades  ;  the  trades  themselves  must 
exist ;  no  children  anywhere  are  forced  to  work  at 
them.  If  the  parents  send  them,  that  is  not  the 
fault  of  the  masters  or  of  the  overseers.  What 
would  he  substitute  instead  of  the  children  ?  The 
commerce  of  the  world  cannot  be  stopped  because 
some  suffer.' 

No  one  should  say  that  rich  men  steal ;  they 
accumulate.  Even  so,  Governments  do  not  ever 


ix  HELIANTHUS  171 

steal ;  they  annex.  Everything  is  excused  when  it 
is  en groSy  or  en  bloc\  you  kill  one  man,  you  go  to  the 
scaffold  or  the  hulks ;  you  kill  fifty  thousand  men, 
you  are  decorated,  pensioned,  honoured,  deified. 
Certainly  you  do ;  what  could  be  more  right  and 
proper  ?  The  whole  question  lies  in  your  quantities. 
The  whole  matter  is  one  of  degree. 


CHAPTER   X 

IN  the  autumn  of  the  year,  King  John  was 
suddenly  taken  ill,  for  almost  the  first  time  in  his 
life,  except  when  he  had  suffered  from  an  occasional 
surfeit  of  the  pleasures  of  the  table  with  its  conse- 
quent indigestion.  He  had  contracted  a  slight  cold 
in  paying  an  unexpected  night-visit  to  rouse  up  a 
distant  garrison,  and  with  the  chill  of  it  upon  him 
had  gone  to  a  monster  battue,  where  he  had 
slaughtered  the  birds  and  beasts  driven  past  him  till 
his  arms  ached.  The  dense  autumn  woods  were 
damp  and  vaporous,  and  in  them  his  cold  was  in- 
creased, so  that  it  became  bronchitis.  He  was  never 
in  any  danger,  but  the  mere  idea  of  his  malady 
caused  depression  in  the  Exchanges  of  Europe  ;  why, 
it  would  probably  have  puzzled  the  stockholders  and 
the  publicists  to  say,  for  if  he  had  died,  his  eldest 
son  would  have  succeeded  him  peaceably,  and  would 
have  continued  to  govern  on  precisely  the  same 
lines,  with  the  placid  and  resolute  composure  of  a 
man  who  knows  that  Heaven  keeps  his  powder  dry 
for  him. 

Ignorant  people  imagine  that  the  law  having 
settled  that  the  King  never  dies,  it  cannot  be  a  mat- 
ter of  great  concern  who  is,  or  who  has  ceased  to  be, 
the  King ;  since,  if  the  personality  change,  the  office 
remains  unchanged.  Even  courtiers  admit  this, 

172 


CHAP,  x  HELIANTHUS 

since  they  say,  '  The  King  is  dead ;  long  live  the 
King ! ' 

Fortunately  the  next  day  all  the  newspapers  of 
Europe  were  able  to  print  in  capital  letters  the  happy 
fact  that  the  attack  was  not  dangerous,  since  King 
John  had  been  able  to  eat  some  spoonfuls  of  chicken 
puree.  His  kingdom  was  intensely  interesting  to  all 
the  other  Powers,  because  each  of  them  wanted  it; 
and  it  had  an  equal  interest  for  politicians  as  for 
speculators,  because  its  geographical  position  and  its 
trimming  policy  made  it  an  unknown  quantity  in 
the  possible  event  of  a  great  war ;  politicians  and 
speculators  both  being  keenly  aware  that  Treaties  of 
Alliance,  like  all  other  contracts,  hold  good  only 
until  some  pen-knife  makes  a  slit  in  them,  and  are 
inviolable  only  until  one  or  other  of  the  contracting 
parties  tears  them  up  and  dances  on  their  pieces. 

The  Crown  Prince  was  assiduous  in  his  attendance 
at  his  father's  bedside.  Like  every  person  conscious 
of  considerable  superiority  in  himself  to  all  others,  he 
could  not  but  be  sensible  that  life  in  denying  him  the 
highest  opportunities  was  unjust.  He  would  not 
have  believed  in  himself  as  he  did,  if  he  had  not 
believed  that  he  alone  was  destined  to  govern 
Helianthus  with  that  force  and  firmness  which  the 
mingled  idiocy  and  wickedness  of  its  inarticulate 
multitudes  required.  But  he  had  an  extreme  re- 
spect for  his  father. 

His  father,  he  considered,  was  an  admirable  ruler ; 
although  in  the  recesses  of  his  mind,  Theo  could  not 
but  be  conscious  that  he  himself  would  be  a  still 
better  one. 

His  father  did  yield  sometimes ;  Theo  knew  that 
he  himself  would  never  yield,  on  any  question  what- 


i74  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

soever,  or  to  any  adviser  ever  born  of  man.  If 
any  one  had  ever  presumed  to  point  out  to  him  as 
a  deterrent  the  fate  of  Louis  XVI.,  he  would  have 
replied  that  Louis  would  have  lived  and  died  at  the 
Tuileries  or  Versailles  if  he  had  only  known  how  to 
use  the  guillotine  properly  on  his  subjects,  instead  of 
waiting  till  his  subjects  used  it  on  him ;  which  per- 
haps is  true,  for  if  he  had  been  quicker  than  the 
nation  in  making  the  axe  his  ally,  there  would  prob- 
ably have  been  no  Terror,  no  Consulate,  no  Empire. 
Theo  put  away  from  him  as  whispers  of  the  devil 
those  irrepressible  desires  to  be  himself  the  ruler 
which  assailed  him,  and  obtruded  themselves  on  the 
reverential  sorrow  with  which  he  heard  that  the  lobe 
of  his  father's  left  lung  was  inflamed  as  well  as  the 
left  bronchial  tube.  Slightly,  only  very  slightly,  the 
physicians  affirmed,  so  slightly  indeed  that  the  in- 
flammation was  almost  imperceptible ;  perhaps  even 
totally  imperceptible,  thought  the  nurse,  whose 
experience  in  hospital  wards  had  made  her  sceptical 
of  medical  assertions. 

Four  nights  were  passed  by  the  Crown  Prince, 
fully  dressed,  in  a  chamber  adjoining  the  King's. 
He  was  respectfully  assured  that  such  a  vigil  was  not 
necessary,  but  he  was  a  man  who  would  never  allow 
his  duty  to  be  dictated  to  him  even  by  so  infallible 
a  pope  as  a  doctor.  During  that  semi-slumber,  that 
mixture  of  confused  dreams  and  congested  reflections 
which  accompany  such  vigils,  he  could  not  but  see 
as  in  a  vision  the  country  as  it  would  be  when  it 
should  have  passed  under  his  own  rule  —  a  country 
shaved,  cropped,  drilled,  put  in  irons,  fed  by  rule, 
lodged  by  order,  made  clean  by  Act  of  Parliament, 
kept  virtuous  by  regulations,  with  an  inexorable 


x  HELIANTHUS  175 

hygiene  and  an  inoculated  virtue  ;  its  foremost  privi- 
lege and  duty  being  to  carry  the  musket,  its  second 
being  to  pay  all  taxes  with  humble  alacrity  on  the 
days  ordained. 

Theo  of  Gunderode  never  doubted  his  own 
infallibility,  his  own  semi-divinity,  his  own  absolute 
preciousness  to  the  nation  which,  without  him  and 
his,  would,  he  was  certain,  be  lost  in  a  whirlpool  of 
blood  and  a  chaos  of  infidelity.  It  never  came 
within  his  mental  vision  to  suppose  that  he  was  an 
ordinary  man  with  less  than  the  usual  allowance  of 
brain  and  more  than  the  usual  allowance  of  obsti- 
nacy, whose  life  or  whose  death  was  entirely  imma- 
terial to  the  world  except  so  far  as  the  fables  and 
falsehoods  of  other  men's  follies  had  lifted  him  up 
into  unreal  values. 

Such  stupidity  is,  indeed,  not  without  its  uses  to 
persons  of  exalted  station,  as  it  prevents  them  from 
ever  doubting  their  own  suitability  for  such  exalta- 
tion. No  shadow  or  shred  of  such  a  doubt  had  ever 
visited  the  mind  of  the  Crown  Prince  ;  a  mind  made 
of  stout  impenetrable  stuff,  as  minds  which  are  com- 
fortable to  their  possessors  always  are.  He  was  as 
honestly  convinced  of  his  own  utility  and  indis- 
pensability  to  his  country  as  a  mother  is  convinced 
of  hers  to  the  fcetus  she  carries  in  her  womb.  The 
country  could  only  live,  breathe,  have  its  being, 
through  him  and  his  family ;  remove  himself  and 
his  family,  where  would  the  country  be  ?  Broken 
up  under  some  foreign  rule,  no  doubt,  or  swamped 
in  socialism  under  his  brother  Elim.  He  himself 
was  the  only  possible  Vice-Regent  of  God  in  Helian- 
thus.  Doubtless  he  overrated  his  own  qualities  ;  and 
in  his  own  estimate  called  obstinacy  firmness,  igno- 


176  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

ranee  wisdom,  foolhardiness  courage,  stupidity  supe- 
riority, brutality  virility,  and  so  on,  even  as  ordinary 
mortals  baptize  their  defects  as  excellences.  But 
this  could  only  be  proved  when  he  came  to  the 
throne,  and  so  long  as  he  lived  there  would  certainly 
be  always  one  person  to  whom  it  would  never  be 
proven,  namely,  himself. 

Whilst  he  kept  his  vigils,  and  persuaded  himself 
that  he  was  absorbed  in  his  anxiety  and  apprehension, 
his  brother  Othyris  was  haunted  by  a  different  kind 
of  disquietude.  If  his  father  died,  he  himself  would 
be  next  heir  to  the  throne.  The  present  illness 
brought  this  possibility  home  to  him  with  startling 
force. 

Therefore,  if  in  the  innermost  soul  of  the  Crown 
Prince  there  was  a  lurking,  secret  sense  of  disappoint- 
ment when  King  John  got  well  enough  to  eat  some 
roast  pheasant  instead  of  chicken  broth,  Othyris 
was,  without  any  mingled  feelings,  unfeignedly  glad  ; 
and  a  great  apprehension  was  lifted  off  his  mind 
when  his  father  went  for  his  first  drive  in  the 
avenues  of  the  public  park,  showing  a  complete 
convalescence  by  the  size  of  his  cheroot.  The 
people  cheered  the  King  as  he  passed  (for  in  every 
crowd  there  are  always  many  who  are  good-natured, 
and  many  more  who  are  snobs) ;  and  the  sovereign 
thought  to  himself:  (  They  know  what  they  would 
have  lost  if  I  had  died.'  To  him  it  seemed  natural 
and  fitting  that  they  should  be  grateful  to  himself, 
his  physicians,  and  Providence  for  the  favour  of  his 
recovery. 

There  was  a  Thanksgiving  Service  in  honour  of 
his  recovery  at  the  Cathedral  ;  that  great  and  fa- 
mous building  which  had  been  in  its  earliest  years 


x  HELIANTHUS  177 

a  temple  of  Zeus,  and  in  its  present  composite  archi- 
tecture was  Classic,  Byzantine,  Renaissance,  holding 
a  score  of  various  and  opposing  styles  in  its  mighty 
rambling  mass,  and  sending  forth  its  sonorous  chimes 
over  the  city  at  its  feet.  The  celebration  was  impos- 
ing in  the  mingled  religious,  secular,  and  military 
pomp  and  ceremony  which  characterised  it.  All  the 
princes  of  the  reigning  House  were,  of  course,  pres- 
ent ;  troops  were  massed  in  large  numbers  in  the 
cathedral  square  ;  the  great  bell  of  solid  silver,  only 
heard  on  supreme  occasions,  sent  its  sweet,  deep 
notes  into  the  springtide;  and  a  considerable  num- 
ber of  persons,  chiefly  women  and  children,  were 
crushed  and  suffocated  between  the  barricades  cov- 
ered with  crimson  cloth,  and  the  lines  of  armed 
soldiery  and  police.  This  is  the  human  sacrifice 
which  is  as  essential  to  the  success  of  a  modern 
triumph  as  decapitated  heads  rolling  on  the  grass 
are  necessary  to  the  feasts  of  savage  and  misguided 
nations. 

The  monarch,  standing  before  the  high  altar,  with 
his  hand  on  his  sword  hilt,  and  the  sunlight  falling 
down  from  the  golden  dome  on  to  the  bald  crown  of 
his  head,  was  an  inharmonious  central  figure  ;  but  all 
countries  are  used  to  that  kind  of  incongruity. 
Even  Caesar's  cranium  did  not  wholly  suit  the  laurel 
wreath. 

1  What  is  in  his  mind  ? '  wondered  Othyris,  as  he 
stood  a  step  behind  his  father,  before  that  grand  and 
glittering  altar.  c  Gratitude  ?  Faith  ?  Desire  to 
deserve  renewed  health  ?  Sentiment,  tender  and 
touching,  of  the  city's  rejoicing?  Belief  in  the  Deity 
to  whom  thanks  and  praise  are  being  offered  in  his 
name  by  those  lovely  voices  of  the  youthful  choristers 


178  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

and  the  vox  humana  of  the  noble  organ  ? '  No  : 
not  any  one  of  these  emotions  was  likely  to  be  felt 
by  John  of  Gunderode.  He  was  probably  chafing 
at  the  length  of  the  service,  and  feeling  the  impa- 
tience for  food  and  drink  of  a  hungry  convalescent. 

The  King  drove  home  behind  his  beautiful  white 
horses,  holding  his  plumed  casque  on  his  knees,  and 
bending  his  head  to  the  people  with  more  cordiality 
than  usual.  The  enthusiasm  of  the  population 
pleased  him,  and  the  vast  crowds,  kept  in  place  by 
the  soldiery,  were  guarantee  to  him  that  he  could  go 
to  war  when  he  pleased.  For  a  war  was  the  desire 
of  his  soul. 

In  these  days  a  country  which  has  not  a  war  on 
its  hands  is  considered  to  be  either  numerically  or 
financially  weak ;  probably  both.  King  John  had 
reigned  thirty  years  and  had  sent  his  troops  nowhere  ; 
he  had  acquired  no  territory  ;  he  had  utilised  none 
of  the  raw  material  which  had  been  gathered  and 
drilled  so  perseveringly,  except,  indeed,  once  when  an 
expedition  to  a  desert  country  had  been  planned  and 
executed  by  the  ambitious  old  Minister,  Domitian 
Corvus,  and  had  ended  in  the  decimation  of  the 
Helianthine  battalions  by  a  ruler  uncivilised  and  un- 
christian —  a  period  of  sad  humiliation  to  the  nation 
and  the  monarch.  Ever  since  that  painful  period  the 
King  had  no  desire  in  his  soul  more  strong  and 
more  difficult  of  realisation  than  his  wish  for  war ; 
he  would  have  been  quite  ready  to  send  his  troops 
to  be  cut  to  pieces  in  aid  of  one  of  his  allies ;  but 
Europe  was  at  peace  —  that  is,  was  armed  to  the 
teeth,  but  afraid  to  move.  The  only  campaign 
which  offered  itself  was  one  in  alliance  with  Candor, 
in  barbaric  lands. 


x  HELIANTHUS  179 

The  great  and  ancient  kingdom  of  Candor,  which 
had  of  late  years  called  herself  Imperia,  because  she 
thought  it  sounded  finer  in  the  ears  of  mankind 
and  was  told  that  it  was  philologically  more  correct, 
was  a  great  friend  to  the  newly-made  kingdom  of 
Helianthus.  She  did  not  call  herself  an  ally,  be- 
cause, whilst  friendship  engages  to  nothing,  alliance 
compromises  and  may  want  a  sword  drawn ;  and 
Candor's  sword  was  always  in  use  for  herself  alone, 
unsheathed,  all  the  world  over,  preceding  and  pro- 
tecting her  commerce  and  her  religion.  Candor 
liked  to  keep  her  hands  free ;  and  to  that  wisdom 
she  owed  her  eminence  and  vast  extension.  No 
doubt,  to  be  every  nation's  ally,  as  Julius  was, 
comes  to  much  the  same  thing  in  the  end  ;  but  the 
policy  of  Candor  (otherwise  Imperia)  was  the  wiser : 
no  Power  could  say  that  Candor  had  deceived  it,  for 
she  never  promised  anything. 

Her  sovereign  and  princes  paid  flattering  visits  to 
other  countries,  her  fleets  did  the  same ;  her  ambas- 
sadors were  doubly  discreet,  because  they  were  careful 
not  to  know  the  language  of  any  country  to  which 
they  were  accredited ;  she  was  always  ready  to  lend 
out  of  her  great  riches,  if  the  security  given  were 
good  ;  and  her  banks  were  the  most  solid  in  all  the 
world.  But  her  sword  she  would  not  draw  in  inter- 
national complications  ;  it  was  essentially  a  domestic 
instrument,  and  was  generally  only  used  on  black, 
brown,  and  yellow  bodies,  which  of  course  are  not 
counted  as  true  war-game  any  more  than  in  sport 
rabbits  are  counted  as  tigers.  At  the  present 
moment  Candor  was  pushing  on  Helianthus  to  what 
she  called  expansion ;  ordinary  mortals  call  it  con- 
quest. The  synonym  is  not  new ;  it  was  in  use  in 


i8o  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

the  time  of  the  Caesars.  King  John  thought  expan- 
sion an  admirable  term,  and  an  admirable  thing  ; 
and  he  did  not  perceive  that  whilst  it  was  really  so 
to  the  florid  health,  the  full-blooded  strength, 
the  plethora  of  wealth,  the  masterful  temper,  and  the 
energetic  force  of  Candor  herself,  it  was  to  the 
Helianthine  realm  and  people,  with  their  scanty 
resources,  their  insufficient  population,  and  their 
enormous  taxation,  as  injurious  as  blood-letting  to  a 
weak  constitution.  King  John  had  visited  hospitals 
to  little  purpose,  for  he  had  not  learned  to  see  the 
difference  between  robust  health  and  anaemia.  To 
him  war  always  appeared  a  s'anitary  phlebotomy  ;  so, 
in  despite  of  all  precedent  and  good  sense,  he  pre- 
pared to  go  to  war  or,  as  Candor  called  it,  to  colonise, 
to  civilise,  to  open  new  markets,  to  change  sandy 
wastes  into  rich  cornfields. 

There  was  great  activity  in  the  ports,  and  the 
depots,  and  the  barrack-yards  ;  the  railway  trains 
were  full  of  recruits  and  men  of  the  reserve  huddled 
together  like  cattle  in  trucks ;  there  was  much 
speech-making  on  platforms,  and  spouting  of  vain- 
glorious periods  ;  and  contractors  were  jubilant,  get- 
ting rid  of  all  their  inferior  goods  at  most  superior 
prices.  Helianthus,  who  had  so  much  to  learn  and 
was  frequently  being  boxed  on  the  ears  for  her 
ignorance  by  her  big  sisters,  was  as  a  whole  flattered 
by  the  idea  that  she  could  go  a-colonising  with  her 
flag  flying,  as  in  the  country  districts  her  boys  and 
girls  went  a-maying  with  their  posies  tied  to  poles. 
The  enterprise  was  not  to  a  great  degree  popular, 
but  it  was  trumpeted  by  the  Press,  praised  in  the 
clubs,  and  held  up  to  national  admiration  by  fluent 
orators  both  in  and  out  of  Parliament  and  Senate. 


x  HELIANTHUS  181 

The  King  even  sacrificed  several  days  of  blackcock 
and  wild  turkey  shooting  to  contribute  his  quota  to 
the  national  enthusiasm,  and  to  do  his  part  in  offer- 
ing to  the  public  the  alcohol  of  a  boastful  vanity.  He 
received  in  the  throne-room  a  deputation  of  senators, 
deputies,  and  personages  ;  he  wore  full-dress  uniform, 
his  grandest  Orders,  and  a  jewelled  sabre ;  and  he 
fully  believed  that  he  was  doing  his  highest  duty  to 
the  nation  and  the  world  in  sacrificing  himself  thus 
in  autumn  days,  when  blackcock  and  wild  turkeys 
might  have  been  falling  like  rain  before  his  breech- 
loader. He  congratulated  the  deputation,  the 
country,  and  himself,  on  the  martial  temper  which 
(according  to  him)  was  growing  up  amongst  the 
younger  men  ;  and  predicted  that,  under  the  favour- 
ing benignity  of  Providence,  the  Helianthines  would 
become  stronger  and  more  powerful  with  every 
decade,  and  rise  to  true  greatness  in  the  history  of 
modern  nations.  Great !  —  what  is  the  meaning  of 
the  adjective  in  the  mouths  of  monarchs,  of  princes, 
and  of  statesmen  ?  A  docile  populace,  pleased  to 
beget  sons  for  the  slaughter ;  ready  to  starve  on  its 
own  hearths  in  order  that  the  policy  of  its  leaders 
may  be  victorious  abroad  ;  veteran  soldiers  willing  to 
leave  their  occupations  and  families  to  take  up  arms, 
and  meekly  accepting  neglect  and  starvation  on 
their  return  to  their  homes  ;  the  flag  flying  in  every 
far-away  distant  sphere,  that  the  sweater  may  thrive 
and  the  goldbroker  gorge ;  the  active  army  a  sub- 
missive servant,  equally  ready  to  ravage  a  dark 
continent  abroad,  or  to  gag  liberty  at  home ;  the 
navy,  a  mighty  tool  always  at  hand  to  blockade,  and 
bombard,  and  burn  on  any  shore,  wherever  the 
potential  traders  at  home  require  new  marts,  or  a 


182  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

rival  Power  has  gained  a  footing;  an  exchequer 
deep  as  the  deep  sea,  into  which  fools  pour  their 
earnings  meekly  and  trustfully,  and  the  spendthrift 
State  plunges  ravenous  hands  unpunished  —  this  is 
for  a  country  to  be  great  as  modern  monarchs  and 
their  ministers  construe  greatness.  Should  Helian- 
thus  be  behind  her  sister-nations  in  this  kind  of 
greatness  ?  Forbid  it,  Heaven  ! 

c  More  whipped-cream  flavoured  with  cura9oa,' 
whispered  Tyras ;  and  Othyris  wondered  in  secret : 

'  Does  he  really  believe  what  he  says  ?  He  lies 
like  truth.' 

It  is  true  that  the  power  of  self-delusion  is 
enormous  ;  and  men  in  high  places  are  saturated 
with  it  as  the  drinker  with  a  drug. 

The  Crown  Prince  alone  listened  with  a  devout 
belief  and  admiration  ;  he  would  say  just  such  things 
himself  in  future  years.  Great?  Doubtless  the 
country  would  be  great  —  under  himself.  Great ! 
The  word  seemed  to  boom  through  the  air, 
thrice  repeated  as  it  had  been  in  the  sovereign's 
harsh,  rasping,  authoritative  tones. 

Othyris  heard  in  it  the  grinding  roll  of  cannon 
wheels,  the  tramp  of  young  men  going  to  their 
death,  the  crash  of  exploding  shells,  the  rattle 
of  emptying  money-bags,  the  moans  of  widowed 
women,  of  fatherless  children. 

King  John  put  off  his  uniform,  and  Orders,  and 
jewelled  sabre,  dressed  himself  in  a  morning  suit  of 
tweed,  and  sat  down  to  his  noonday  breakfast. 
His  conscience  was  satisfied,  and  his  vanity,  which 
mattered  more,  was  pleased.  To  speak  well  was  not 
a  talent  by  any  means  natural  to  him.  In  learning 
to  speak  in  public  he  had  contended  with  many 


x  HELIANTHUS  183 

personal  defects ;  a  confused  articulation,  a  slowness 
of  utterance,  a  halting  memory,  a  tendency  to  stam- 
mer ;  but  he  had  vanquished  these  impediments, 
although  he  could  not  alter  the  unmelodious  tones 
of  his  voice,  which  he  had,  however,  disciplined  into 
a  certain  imperiousness  befitting  his  position,  at  least 
in  his  own  eyes  and  in  those  of  his  courtiers.  He 
was  gratified  at  the  consciousness  that  he  had  spoken 
well,  and  that  his  speech  was  being  telegraphed  to 
the  four  quarters  of  the  globe.  It  gave  him  the 
sense  of  being  a  great  monarch ;  of  being  one  of 
those  who  make  the  fine  weather  and  the  sunshine 
of  the  world.  Also,  as  far  as  an  ardent  desire  could 
be  felt  in  his  phlegmatic  breast,  he  wished  to  try  his 
troops  in  real  war,  as  a  boy,  having  played  with  toy 
soldiers  till  he  is  tired,  longs  to  be  at  more  serious 
pastimes  with  powder  and  shot.  And  as  scientific 
professors  make  their  experiments,  as  it  is  said,  in 
corpore  vili,  so  he  was  glad  to  make  his  first  trial 
of  the  capacity  of  his  army  on  the  inferior  oppo- 
nents of  barbaric  nations.  For  in  the  recesses  of 
his  soul  he  was  not  sure  of  his  troops  ;  and  being  a 
shrewd  and  capable  person  he  was  aware  that  his 
commissariat  was  by  no  means  to  be  trusted  in  the 
all-important  office  of  supplies. 

But,  alas  !  for  the  illusions  of  international  friend- 
ships, Candor  (alias  Imperia)  changed  her  mind, 
because  she  had  changed  her  administration.  More- 
over Gallia  set  up  her  back  and  showed  her  teeth, 
like  the  fiery  creature  she  is,  and  the  new  govern- 
ment in  the  great  realm  of  Candor  was  not  disposed 
to  irritate  her.  Gallia  was  her  foe,  and  Helianthus 
was  her  friend ;  but  nations,  like  individuals,  must 
throw  over  their  friends  sometimes,  so  Candor  threw 


1 84  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

over  the  Helianthines.  Her  diplomatists  caused 
them  to  understand  that  the  moment  had  not  yet 
arrived  when  they  could  go  a-conquering  as  their 
villagers  went  a-maying ;  that  it  would  be  wiser  to 
furl  the  flags  and  untie  the  posies.  Helianthus 
obeyed,  la  mort  dans  lJame.  She  was  not  strong 
enough  to  stand  alone,  and  to  go  by  herself  into 
the  sandy  wastes  of  the  land  of  ruby  mines  and 
tetze-flies. 

The  King  was  bitterly  enraged,  painfully  morti- 
fied ;  and  he  could  show  neither  rage  nor  mortifica- 
tion. He  could  shoot  blackcock  and  wild  turkeys, 
indeed,  all  day  long  and  every  day ;  but  there  are 
hours  of  chagrin  and  humiliation  when  even  the 
gun  fails  to  console  the  sportsman. 

The  ships  were  unloading ;  the  trains  were  taking 
the  regiments  back  to  their  home-quarters ;  the 
flags  were  being  rolled  up  and  put  on  stands  like 
umbrellas ;  the  hundreds  and  thousands  of  mules 
and  pack-saddles  collected  were  being  sold  at  a 
tenth  part  of  their  cost ;  the  barracks  were  hearing 
only  the  everyday  squeak  of  the  bugles.  The  in- 
fluential organs  of  the  Press  put  Bellona  back  in  a 
drawer  and  set  up  in  her  stead  her  rival  Pax ;  even 
as  the  cheap  toy-sellers  packed  up  all  their  little 
military  playthings,  and  instead  sold  ducks  and 
geese,  or  cats  and  mice.  Only  the  contractors, 
although  disappointed,  were  consoled ;  because  if 
the  stores  which  they  had  so  profusely  provided 
rotted  uselessly  in  the  warehouses  of  the  State,  the 
State  had  already  paid  for  them  at  ten  times  their 
value. 

They  would  not  have  the  hoped-for  pleasure  of 
supplying  for  two  or  three  years,  to  an  entire  army, 


x  HELIANTHUS  185 

musty  flour,  mouldy  rice,  ilex  berries  for  coffee, 
chemicals  for  liquors,  and  all  the  other  luxuries  of 
civilisation  ;  but  in  a  smaller  way  they  always  did 
a  good  business  in  these  things  with  the  com- 
missariat. 

The  abandonment  of  her  conquering  (alias  colo- 
nising) projects  gave  a  bad  blow  beneath  the  belt 
to  Helianthine  credit,  and  sent  her  stocks  down  on 
the  Exchanges  of  her  neighbours.  She  had  con- 
tracted large  war  loans  for  which  she  would  have 
to  pay  heavily  for  probably  many  years  to  come. 
Financiers  were  unkind  to  her,  and  made  her  feel 
her  want  of  capital  and  of  independence.  Her  mili- 
tary men  were  disappointed  and  sullen.  The  in- 
crease in  her  taxation  had  no  equivalent  in  flattered 
national  vanity.  She  had  not  even  the  loot  of  a 
barbaric  palace,  or  a  captive  dusky  king  with  a  huge 
belly  and  a  prehensile  jaw,  to  show  in  her  cities 
to  her  populace.  Gallia  mocked  her  with  unkind 
raillery,  and  Candor  promised  her  better  luck  next 
time.  Helianthus  realised  the  bitter  wisdom  of  the 
prayer,  c  Save  me  from  my  friends,  dear  God ;  from 
my  enemies  I  can  defend  myself.' 

The  uncivilised  monarch  who  had  escaped  the 
blessings  of  civilisation  at  the  cannon's  mouth,  sent 
to  Helios  some  living  lions  and  ostriches  as  a  pres- 
ent to  the  ruler  of  Helianthus,  some  ivory,  ebony, 
and  uncut  gems  ;  but  these  humble  offerings  have 
not  about  them  the  glory  and  glamour  of  booty,  and 
gave  no  pleasure  to  the  Gunderode  or  the  populace. 
They  would  have  been  visited  by  delighted  multi- 
tudes if  they  had  been  brought  in  cages  and  cases  by 
returning  and  victorious  troop-ships ;  but  as  mere 
signs  of  a  grateful  barbarian's  relief  at  having  escaped 


186  HELIANTHUS  CHAP,  x 

invasion  and  education,  they  lacked  interest ;  and 
the  lions  roared  and  raged  in  impotent  wretchedness, 
and  the  ostriches  rubbed  their  plumes  off  against  the 
bars  of  their  cages  almost  disregarded. 

*  Why,  whether  in  our  pleasure  or  our  pain,  are 
the  poor  beasts  and  birds  always  sacrificed  ?  '  thought 
Othyris.  It  is  a  question  which  many  have  asked 
before  him,  but  to  which  none  have  ever  had  any 
reply. 


CHAPTER   XI 

GREAT    news    was   at   this    period  being  circulated 
throughout  Helianthus. 

The  Crown  Princess  was  pregnant  after  a  sterility 
of  ten  years !  Medical  men  certified  the  fact. 
Journalists  glorified  it.  Ministers  went  on  missions 
of  announcement ;  ambassadors  came  on  errands 
of  felicitation.  The  successful  advent  of  the  fifth 
month  was  proclaimed  to  an  expectant  and  a  de- 
lighted people  ;  or  a  people  ordered  to  be  delighted, 
as  they  were  ordered  to  be  virtuous,  by  Act  of  Parlia- 
ment. Personally  Princess  Gertrude,  a  modest,  retir- 
ing and  reserved  person,  suffered  horribly  from  this 
publicity.  It  offended  and  tortured  every  innermost 
fibre  of  her  womanhood.  The  congratulations  of 
the  President  of  the  Council  were  as  painful  to  her 
as  the  bulletins  of  the  Court  physicians.  But  she 
did  not  demur  to  any  of  it  for  one  moment :  it  was 
all  part  of  her  duty  to  endure  this  exposure. 

If  she  envied  the  charcoal-seller  in  her  black  den 
the  privacy  which  that  den  afforded  her  to  pass 
through  her  pregnancy  and  travail  in  peace,  she 
never  said  so.  She  bore  this  part  of  her  punish- 
ment as  mutely  and  meekly  as  she  had  borne  the 
rest ;  she  had  gone  through  this  ordeal  twice  before. 
If  only  her  reward  might  be  at  last  to  bring  forth  a 
male  child ! 

187 


1 88  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

This  desire,  strong  in  almost  every  woman,  was 
in  her  intense  ;  she  longed  to  be  the  mother  of  a 
monarch,  and  she  sighed  to  have  removed  from  her 
what  she  felt  was  a  reproach.  She  scarcely  dared  to 
hope  for  the  gratification  of  her  desire.  Both  King 
John  and  her  husband  did  not  conceal  their  con- 
temptuous conviction  that  she  would  be  incapable 
of  bearing  a  son  ;  that  when  the  nine  moons  should 
have  run  their  course,  another  little  female  creature 
would  bleat  in  a  world  where  even  female  royalty 
does  not  count  as  much  as  male. 

The  Crown  Prince  himself  felt  that  he  had  not 
deserved  such  an  unaccountable  slight  from  a  Deity 
whom  he  had  always  served  zealously,  and  in  whose 
honour  he  would  with  pleasure  have  cheerfully  burnt 
ten  thousand  unbelievers,  if  burning  had  still  been 
in  vogue. 

If  only  this  time  Heaven  would  vouchsafe  to  give 
the  throne  an  heir !  It  was  extraordinary,  inscru- 
table, and  sorely  trying  to  the  strongest  religious 
faith,  that  whilst  male  infants  wailed  and  squirmed 
by  the  million  in  the  dwellings  of  the  poor  all 
the  world  over,  kicked  their  cold  little  feet  on  rotten 
straw,  and  sucked  with  dry,  hungry  lips  at  empty 
breasts,  a  Prince,  most  orthodox,  most  impecca- 
ble, the  central  pillar  of  the  constitution,  should 
have  been  blessed  by  no  son  in  a  dozen  years  of 
wedlock. 

s  Ah  !  the  poor  soul ! '  thought  Madame  Ogier, 
the  Gallian  ambassadress,  looking  at  Princess  Ger- 
trude at  a  Court  ceremony.  *  If  she  were  only  a 
grocer's  wife,  she  could  go  away,  and  unlace  her 
stays,  and  lie  down.  But  as  it  is  she  is  just  like  the 
poor  horses  they  use  at  home  to  tread  out  wheat  in 


xi  HELIANTHUS  189 

the  farmyards  :  she  is  under  the  whip,  and  she  must 
go  round  and  round,  and  round  and  round.' 

Often  had  she  watched  those  horses,  for  she  had 
an  uncle  a  small  farmer  in  a  central  Gallian  province, 
where  the  young  horses  are  driven  in  a  circle  half- 
frantic,  rearing  and  kicking,  to  thrash  out  the 
ripened  corn  under  their  unshod  hoofs. 

*  The  lines  of  great  folks  are  not  laid  in  pleasant 
places,  as  little  ones  think,'  the  good  lady  who 
represented  Gallia  at  the  Helianthine  Court  said  to 
her  daughter.  *  We  envy  them  when  we  see  them  a 
long  way  off;  but  we  mistake,  my  dear,  we  mistake.' 

Madame  Ogier  herself  was  middle-aged ;  she  was 
stout ;  she  was  short  of  breath ;  her  diamond  tiara 
made  her  head  ache ;  her  ample  bosom,  displayed 
under  its  pearls,  made  her  feel  embarrassed ;  the 
obligations  of  etiquette  worried  her ;  she  sighed  for 
the  time  when  there  had  been  no  other  palace  in  their 
own  lives  than  the  Palace  of  Justice  at  home,  and 
when  she  had  herself  superintended  the  savoury 
cooking  of  the  darne  de  saumon  and  the  entrecote  a  la 
Eordelaise  for  the  dinner  of  her  young  and  hungry 
advocate.  In  the  odd,  topsy-turvy,  half-reactionary 
and  half-revolutionary  society  of  the  capital  cities 
of  our  time  we  may  so  often  see  the  prototypes  of 
Madame  Ogier  —  excellent  women,  devoted  help- 
mates in  the  earlier  stages  of  their  lords'  careers  ;  mere 
hobbles  on  the  foot  in  their  men's  later  position  ;  con- 
scious that  they  are  so,  yet  tenacious  of  their  marital 
and  social  rights,  wearing  their  sparkling  jewels  with 
heavy  head  and  heart  at  imperial  and  royal  balls, 
disfiguring  the  present  and  overshadowing  the  future 
of  their  brilliant  partners,  living  witnesses  of  the 
angular  and  melancholy  issues  of  monogamy. 


190  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

{ I  was  of  use  to  you  once,  Ferdinand  ! '  this  poor 
lady  said,  in  a  rare  moment  of  emotion,  on  a  New 
Year's  morning  in  Helios,  to  her  beloved  lord. 

1  Ah  yes,  my  love,  and  you  are  so  always,'  said 
Ogier,  with  cordial  kindness  and  admirable  false- 
hood. 

She  shook  her  head  sadly ;  she  was  not  deceived, 
and  she  mourned  for  the  little  house  of  twenty-five 
years  before  at  Passy. 

Meanwhile,  whether  pitied  or  envied,  the  poor 
Crown  Princess  bore  her  burden,  and  in  due  time 
was  actually  blessed  by  a  male  child. 

It  was  a  great  occasion  at  the  Palace  of  the  Soleia. 
The  President  of  the  Council,  the  President  of  the 
Senate,  the  Prime  Minister,  the  leader  of  the  Opposi- 
tion and  other  notabilities  were  gathered  together  in 
one  of  the  vast  tapestried  and  frescoed  salons,  with 
the  electric  lamps  shining  above  their  heads  —  some 
of  these  bald,  some  white,  some  grey,  some  dyed, 
but  all  deferentially  bent  in  a  listening  and  humble 
attitude  for  the  news  which  another  quarter  of  an 
hour  must  bring;  so  at  least  a  gynecologist,  sum- 
moned there  from  Candor  for  the  momentous  occa- 
sion, had  assured  them.  Now  and  then  one  or  other 
of  them  murmured  a  sentence,  or  strove  to  conceal 
a  yawn  ;  but  no  conversation  could  be  kept  up  at 
such  a  juncture. 

Suddenly  the  double  doors  were  thrown  open  by 
gentlemen-lackeys,  and  the  Crown  Prince  entered, 
taller,  stiffer,  redder  than  ever,  more  than  ever  with 
the  port  of  a  Hercules  bearing  the  world  upon  his 
shoulders.  As  the  eminent  persons  waiting  there 
humbly  bent  to  the  ground  before  him,  he  announced, 
in  pompous  tones  of  unspeakable  elation,  that  a  prince 


xi  HELIANTHUS  191 

had  been  born  to  the  nation,  a  son  to  him,  an  heir  to 
the  throne.  With  a  certain  condescension,  added  as 
a  courteous  colophon,  he  alluded  to  the  hand  of  a 
merciful  Creator  in  the  auspicious  event,  and  then  he 
had  a  sound  as  of  intoning  in  his  voice. 

Without,  in  the  early  evening,  bells  began  to  ring, 
cannon  to  fire,  bands  to  play,  bonfires  to  be  lit  on  the 
hills  around,  the  solemn,  vision-haunted, god-forsaken 
hills  of  Helios  ;  and  the  people,  with  that  fatal  sus- 
ceptibility and  receptivity  which  throws  a  multitude 
into  the  dangerous  magic  of  suggestivism,  began  to 
shout,  to  sing,  to  cheer,  to  rejoice  for  they  knew  not 
what,  and  gathered  in  uproarious  thousands  before 
the  gates  of  the  Soleia. 

In  answer  to  those  outcries  the  short,  stout,  stiff 
figure  of  the  King,  and  the  spare,  erect,  stiff  figure 
of  the  Crown  Prince,  appeared  together  upon  the 
balcony  above  the  great  entrance,  the  light  from  the 
open  windows  behind  them ;  the  crowd  yelled  its 
congratulations  as  the  banner  of  the  royal  House 
swayed  to  and  fro. 

The  Municipality  presented  a  gold  and  tortoise- 
shell  cradle ;  the  Provincial  Council  a  perambulator 
in  ivory  and  rare  woods  ;  illuminated  addresses  were 
sent  up  from  hundreds  of  mayors  and  prefects ;  and 
a  golden  bowl,  set  round  with  pearls  of  price,  for 
bread  and  milk,  was  offered  by  the  Senate. 

The  King  considered  all  these  gifts  as  witnesses  to 
his  own  popularity,  and  as  so  many  gilded  nails  driven 
into  the  dais  of  his  throne  to  strengthen  it.  The 
Crown  Prince  scarcely  went  so  far  as  that ;  he  took 
them  as  a  right. 

A  little  later  the  most  splendid  pomp,  and  the  most 
extravagant  expenditure,  attended  the  infant's  baptism 


HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

in  the  Cathedral  of  St.  Athanasius.  He  was  named 
John  Theodoric,  and  received  the  title  of  Prince  of 
Helios.  He  was  made  colonel  of  a  regiment  of 
Guards  and  military  governor  of  a  province.  The 
usual  amnesty  was  granted  in  honour  of  his  birth  to 
condemned  persons  whose  offences  were  not  too 
flagrant,  although  no  one,  if  put  to  it,  could  have 
explained  the  logic  of  so  odd  a  connection  as  that 
between  the  birth  of  a  babe  and  the  national  prisons 
and  reformatories.  An  atom  of  flesh  is  born  into  the 
world,  different  in  no  way  from  all  other  flesh  except 
in  the  superstitions  and  imaginations  of  men.  This 
event  is  accompanied  by  the  pardon  of  several  thou- 
sands of  incarcerated  persons,  and  the  cancelling  of 
tens  of  thousands  of  punitive  sentences  and  fines. 
Now  it  is  clear  that  if  the  incarcerations  were  just, 
and  just  the  fines,  they  should  not  be  altered  ;  if  un- 
just, that  they  should  not  have  to  wait  to  be  redressed 
for  the  incident  of  an  infant's  birth.  The  usage 
makes  a  farce  of  law,  and  puppets  of  a  magistracy. 
But  the  populace  is  never  logical,  and  is  easily  moved 
to  mawkish  sentiment ;  nor  does  it  dislike  to  see 
justice  in  motley,  and  the  gravity  of  law  tricked  out 
in  cap  and  bells. 

The  winter,  usually  so  mild  in  Helianthus,  had 
become  of  great  severity  at  this  time.  The  mountain 
ranges  were  covered  with  snow,  the  plains  were  swept 
by  icy  and  fierce  winds,  the  blue  sea  was  grey  and 
sullen  and  murderous.  So  rare  was  such  a  season  in 
this  country  that  people  were  unprepared  for  it,  both 
in  the  towns  and  in  the  provinces  ;  neither  their 
houses  nor  their  clothes  were  made  to  resist  its  sharp- 
ness ;  the  angry  waters  swallowed  up  the  slender, 
shell-like  fishing  boats,  and  the  frozen  hills  and  vales 


xi  HELIANTHUS  193 

killed  the  lambs,  the  kids,  the  calves,  the  sheep,  and 
the  troops  of  wild  young  hares  were  famished  on  the 
frozen  plains.  Many  human  lives  were  also  lost 
through  the  unfamiliar  visitation.  Men  and  women 
and  children  were  found  dead  beneath  churchyard 
walls,  on  ancient  temple  steps,  on  solitary  shores,  in 
lonely  wattle  huts,  even  in  the  lanes  of  cities  with 
the  cold  electric-light  shed  on  them.  Cold,  un- 
usually prolonged,  had  already  injured  the  olive  and 
the  orange  harvest.  Corn  was  taxed  so  highly  that 
it  was  out  of  the  reach  of  tens  of  thousands,  and 
the  chief  bulk  of  it  was  shut  up  in  huge  granaries 
belonging  to  syndicates  who  would  not  sell,  know- 
ing it  would  go  up  higher  and  higher  in  price  as  the 
people  suffered  more.  Children  lay  dead  in  the 
tireless  cabins,  mere  heaps  of  bones  and  yellow  skin. 
Feeble  throngs,  hollow  of  eye  and  cheek,  and  burnt 
up  with  fever,  collected  before  the  communal  palaces 
in  their  little  towns,  clamouring  for  food,  and  got 
enough  for  two  out  of  two  score.  The  bright  yellow 
discs  of  the  coltsfoot  and  the  celandine  filled  the 
ditches  in  the  opening  of  the  year,  and  amidst  them 
lay  dead  bodies  killed  by  hunger  or  from  indigestion 
through  eating  balls  of  clay. 

There  were  numerous  subscriptions,  headed  by 
the  donations  of  the  king  and  closed  by  those  of 
his  tradesmen,  as  a  child's  procession  of  Noah's 
Ark  animals  is  headed  by  the  elephant  and  closed 
by  the  rabbit.  Large  sums  of  money  passed  through 
many  hands  and  many  channels,  although  not  much 
of  it  reached  its  destination  ;  and  throughout  the 
more  northern  provinces,  and  in  the  mountainous 
districts,  the  people  lay  fleshless  and  stark  on  the 
roads  and  in  the  barren  fields. 


I94  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

The  people  should  have  been  reconciled  to  their 
fate,  no  doubt,  in  thinking  of  the  tortoise-shell  and 
gold  cradle,  of  the  pearls,  and  furs,  and  laces,  and 
lawns  given  to  the  new-born  prince ;  but,  alas ! 
they  were  so  ignorant  that  they  did  not  know 
of  them,  and  so  had  not  even  this  consolation. 
Many  of  them  did  not  even  know  that  the  Prince 
of  Helios  had  been  born,  so  that  the  agony  of 
their  empty  bellies  and  gnawing  bowels  was  not 
even  alleviated  by  the  national  joy.  In  the  far 
mountains  by  the  lonely  lakes,  on  the  solitary  plains 
of  the  interior,  the  population  was  sparse  and  widely 
scattered ;  the  news  of  the  new-born  Gunderode  did 
not  reach  these  through  any  channel  until  such  time 
as  their  priest  included  his  hallowed  name  in  public 
prayer. 

Amidst  all  this  flutter  and  flurry  in  honour  of  her 
son,  poor  Princess  Gertrude  pressed  the  small  red 
crumpled  face  of  her  babe  to  her  bosom,  of  which 
the  milk  was  denied  to  him,  and  regretted  that  she 
was  not  a  woman  of  the  people,  free  to  do  with  her 
offspring  as  she  chose :  the  wife  of  a  weaver,  of  a 
cobbler,  of  a  tailor,  of  some  worker  in  sulphur  mine 
or  mariner  in  sailing  brig,  only  not  forced  to  yield 
up  her  little  son  to  an  alien  breast  and  to  the  arms 
of  hirelings. 

But  for  the  first  time  in  her  life  she  was  happy 
and  proud,  and  could  feel  that  her  lord  was  con- 
tent with  her.  For  the  first  time  her  heart  was 
closed  to  the  woes  of  others.  Possibly  if  she  had 
gone  into  the  ruined  districts  she  might  have  been 
more  painfully  conscious  of  what  was  being  suffered 
in  them;  but  statistics  and  official  returns  do  not 
touch  the  heart  unless  the  heart  be  accompanied  by 


xi  HELIANTHUS  195 

a  very  vivid  imagination,  and  the  imagination  is  a 
sensitive  plant  which  withers  in  palaces.  She  was 
happy,  for  the  first  time  in  her  life,  proud  of  her 
boy,  and  glad  to  see  her  husband  so  contented  and 
so  triumphant ;  her  one  duty  had  been  to  bear  him 
an  heir,  and  she  had  now  done  that  duty  after  twelve 
years  of  a  marriage  almost  as  bad  as  barren.  She 
was  sorry,  indeed,  for  the  hunger  of  the  south  and 
the  north  whenever  she  thought  about  it ;  but  in- 
tensely sorry  she  could  not  feel.  The  universe 
was  concentrated  for  her  in  the  little  red  wrinkled 
morsel  of  flesh,  slobbering  and  slumbering  in  his 
cradle  under  draperies  of  old  English  point.  He 
was  her  baby,  her  heaven-born,  her  latest  and 
sweetest  treasure ;  but  he  was  much  more  than  this 
in  her  sight :  he  was  the  future  king.  For  her  the 
infant's  toothless,  shapeless  lips  were  touched  by  a 
sacred  chrism. 

'You  too  —  even  you!'  thought  Othyris,  as  he 
saw  her  absorption  in  the  little  heir  :  even  she,  good 
soul  as  she  was,  had  been  drawn  into  the  vortex  of 
selfish  concentration. 

He  could  say  nothing  to  her,  for  anything  he 
would  have  said  in  the  sense  of  reproach  for  her 
selfishness  would  have  sounded  like  disappointment 
and  rancour. 

Undoubtedly  the  cruelty  of  the  lot  of  the  many, 
the  waste  and  self-indulgence  in  the  lives  of  the  few, 
were,  when  she  thought  of  them,  very  painful  and 
perplexing  to  her.  She  could  not  attempt  to  account 
for  the  anomaly  satisfactorily  ;  she  accepted  it  as  a 
sorrowful  mystery  —  which  it  is  not  very  difficult  to 
do  when  the  sorrowful  mystery  does  not  starve  our- 
selves or  our  own  children.  That  her  own  order  was 


196  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

in  any  way  the  cause  of  such  disparities  she  would 
have  indignantly  denied,  and  probably  with  justice. 
But,  as  a  rule,  she  did  not  either  generalise  or 
analyse  ;  she  referred  such  painful  problems  to  the 
omniscience  of  the  All-Supreme. 

Yet,  alas !  the  Providence  in  whom  she  believed  so 
humbly  and  devoutly  was  unkind  to  her  ;  her  little 
son  was  not  more  sacred  to  it  than  the  starved  babes 
in  the  famine  districts  ;  and  whether  fools  or  sages 
were  his  worshippers,  both  were  unable  to  keep  alive 
the  little  scion  of  the  House  of  Gunderode. 

It  has  never  been  explained  satisfactorily  by  either 
philosophers  or  pathologists  why  Nature  is  such  an 
anarchist  that  she  allows  royal  babes  to  be  subject  to 
croup ;  it  is  clearly  wrong  in  the  divine  ordering  of 
things,  and  is  a  problem  which  must  greatly  trouble 
and  confound  the  mind  of  the  true  royalist.  But, 
unfortunately,  the  fact  is  that  royal  infants  are  not 
more  respected  by  disease  than  those  of  the  popula- 
tion of  the  slums,  and  it  so  happened  that  the  poor 
little  Prince  of  Helios  died  after  an  illness  of  a  few 
hours,  suffocated  by  this  common  malady  like  any 
common  child,  and  the  Crown  Princess  mourned  him 
as  any  ordinary  mother  might  have  done.  His  name 
had  scarcely  been  included  in  the  rubric  of  the  priest- 
hood and  the  prayers  of  the  nation,  before  it  ceased  to 
be  anything  more  than  an  inscription  upon  a  tomb. 
The  poor  little  fellow  died  at  five  months  old  ;  the 
length  of  his  names  and  the  weight  of  his  honours 
were  powerless  to  keep  him  alive;  he  actually  died  of 
suffocation,  just  like  any  forlorn  atom  breathing  its 
last  on  a  bed  of  rags,  despite  the  science  and  the 
efforts  of  all  the  physicians  of  the  Court. 

f  Poor  mother  !     Poor  mother  ! '  thought  Othyris 


xi  HELIANTHUS  197 

as  he  heard  the  tidings.  How  cruel  was  life  —  mak- 
ing the  women  lose  what  has  cost  them  such  pangs 
to  bear  and  bring  forth  ! 

He  who  had  felt  the  fetters  which  bound  him  to 
the  throne  lightened  by  the  child's  birth,  felt  them 
return  in  all  their  might  at  his  death.  He  was  once 
more  Heir-Presumptive  to  the  throne  of  Helianthus. 
The  shadow  of  the  purple  hung  like  a  rain-cloud 
upon  the  horizon  of  his  life. 

A  mortuary  chapel  of  great  beauty  and  riches  was 
consecrated  to  the  child's  memory,  and  his  image  in 
solid  silver  was  enshrined  in  it  as  well  as  his  silver 
coffin.  Candles  burned,  and  bells  rang,  and  flowers 
bloomed  above  his  tomb  night  and  day,  and  innumer- 
able young  children  of  his  age  died  of  the  poisoned 
milk  of  mothers  employed  in  the  factories  of  deadly 
trades.  Yet  neither  his  parents  nor  his  grandfather 
would,  by  any  stretch  of  imagination,  have  been  able 
to  conceive  why  the  industrial  classes  are  attracted 
by  anarchistic  doctrines ! 

King  John  was  driving  home,  after  a  day's 
shooting  with  two  of  his  gentlemen,  when  about  a 
mile  off  the  city  gate  on  the  north  shots  were 
fired  at  him  by  three  young  men  hiding  behind  a 
myrtle  hedge  on  the  roadside.  All  the  shots  missed 
him,  and  struck  the  boughs  of  an  opposite  plane- 
tree.  The  young  men  fired  again,  but  two  were 
seized  in  the  act  by  the  carabineers  who  rode  close  to 
the  carriage  ;  the  third  fled  across  the  fields,  and 
momentarily  escaped,  only  to  be  captured  later  on, 
hidden  in  a  disused  water-tank. 

The  King  returned  to  the  Palace,  and  ate  his  dinner 
with  an  undiminished  appetite.  The  youths  were 


198  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

escorted  by  police  and  gendarmes  to  the  city  prison 
for  malefactors,  and  the  attempt  becoming  known, 
the  evening  journals  hastily  printed  *  specials  '  and 
the  Prefect  and  Syndic  as  hastily  organised  thanks- 
givings. The  great  cathedral  bells  rang,  and  the 
palace  square  was  illuminated  and  thronged.  The 
King,  when  he  had  finished  his  dinner,  went  out 
on  to  the  balcony  above  the  great  portico,  accom- 
panied by  the  Crown  Prince,  and  remained  there  for 
a  quarter  of  an  hour,  his  figure  black  against  the 
light  of  the  room  behind  him  ;  standing  bareheaded 
and  making  signs  of  acknowledgment  with  his  right 
hand,  the  spark  of  a  lighted  cigar  between  his  lips 
as  usual. 

The  crowd  cheered,  and  some  of  the  women  in 
it  sobbed  with  hysteria ;  for  an  attempted  assassina- 
tion, like  a  death-bed  repentance,  sends  up  the  value 
of  a  perfectly  useless  and  uninteresting  life,  and  floats 
it  upwards  to  the  empyrean,  as  a  balloon  on  the  mere 
cutting  of  ropes  soars  by  the  force  of  gas  into  the 
clouds  and  above  them. 

The  morning  papers  described  and  illustrated 
the  scene  by  the  plane-tree,  writing  with  enthusiasm 
of  the  wonderful  self-possession  of  the  King,  and 
sold  largely.  They  also  stated  that  the  populace  had 
tried  to  lynch  the  criminals  on  the  way  to  the 
prison,  which  was  quite  untrue ;  and  that  there  had 
been  discovered  indisputable  evidence  of  an  extensive 
international  conspiracy,  which  was  not  true  either, 
but  was  a  communique  :  a  lie  of  the  police,  not  of 
the  Press. 

The  lads  were  said  to  be  dangerous  anarchists ; 
and,  as  usual,  it  was  stated  that  an  electrical  thrill  of 
horror  had  galvanised  the  whole  of  the  universe. 


XT  HELIANTHUS  199 

John  of  Gunderode  himself  took  the  matter  calmly 
but  very  seriously,  and  expected  every  one  to  do  the 
same ;  and  his  private  cypher  and  his  private  wires 
worked  incessantly  for  several  days. 

The  Red  Spectre  always  haunts  the  beds  and  the 
brains  of  sovereigns.  The  roar  of  the  cheering 
crowds  is  so  terribly  similar  to  the  roar  of  a  revolted 
population ;  the  press  of  the  multitudes  through  the 
streets  to  see  a  State  procession  so  painfully  suggests 
what  the  stress  and  haste  would  be  to  see  a  fugitive 
monarch,  a  burning  palace,  an  improvised  scaffold. 
The  guffaw  of  a  grinning  mob  differs  so  little  in  its 
expression  from  the  howl  of  a  crowd  that  is  cursing 
and  clamouring  for  blood.  The  monarchs  may  give 
their  coachmen  or  their  postillions,  or  their  footmen 
on  the  footboard,  revolvers  in  each  pocket ;  they 
may  brave  ridicule  by  mounting  gendarmes  on 
bicycles  behind  them  ;  they  may  wear  coats  of  mail 
under  their  cambric  shirts ;  they  may  have  ton 
weights  of  iron  chains,  and  rows  of  dark  cells  in 
their  prisons  under  the  sea  level,  where  no  ray  of 
daylight  ever  comes,  ready  for  their  foes  when 
captured.  But  all  these  precautions  cannot  rid  them 
of  the  Red  Spectre  ;  of  the  ever-present  personal 
fear  of  assassination  which  chills  their  blood  even 
in  the  warmth  of  a  summer  garden,  of  a  friend's 
embrace,  or  of  a  bridal  bed. 

It  was  this  fear  which  gave  to  the  eyes  of  John  of 
Gunderode  that  strange  expression  of  menace,  of 
apprehension,  of  painful  expectancy,  and  of  scared 
vision,  which  made  men  doubt  whether  he  had  in 
fact  the  stolid  bull-dog  courage  which  was  always 
attributed  to  him,  and  which  was  a  characteristic 
of  his  race.  In  reality  he  had  it;  he  was  naturally 


200  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

brave,  with  a  cynical,  cool  courage,  hard  and  un- 
sympathetic, like  all  his  other  faculties.  But  when 
the  fear  of  assassination  has  once  entered  into  a  man 
it  never  leaves  him ;  it  lies  down  with  him  at  night, 
and  gets  up  with  him  in  the  morning,  like  an  incur- 
able disease.  It  looks  out  from  his  regard  always 
en  vedette,  always  apprehensive,  always  glancing  to 
right  and  to  left  like  the  regard  of  the  oft-hunted 
stag.  John  of  Gunderode  knew  that  this  look  had 
passed  into  his  own  eyes,  reflex  of  a  haunting  thought 
in  his  brain ;  and  to  conceal  it  he  kept  his  eyelids 
half  closed,  or  used  a  double  eyeglass,  for  which  his 
sight  had  no  need. 

It  is  remarkable  that  the  great  ones  of  the  earth, 
when  they  escape  from  a  danger,  always  praise  the 
Deity  as  having  watched  over  and  guided  them  out 
of  it ;  but  when  they  fall  a  victim  to  a  revolver,  or 
a  dagger,  or  a  bomb,  they  are  never  said  by  their 
families  to  have  been  deserted,  or  punished,  by  their 
Heavenly  Father ;  the  most  that  is  said  then,  is  that 
the  ways  of  God  are  mysterious  and  inscrutable.  So, 
as  the  three  youths  had  all  and  each  of  them  missed 
the  anointed  of  their  land,  every  one  in  the  Court 
circle  and  out  of  it  was  loud  in  their  admiration  of 
the  conspicuous  intervention  of  Deity.  It  was  the 
Almighty  Power  which  had  made  the  lads'  sight  fail, 
and  their  hands  tremble,  at  the  critical  moment,  and 
the  bullets  fail  to  find  their  billets. 

c  It  would  have  been  better,'  said  Othyris,  c  if  the 
Almighty  Power  had  intervened  to  prevent  the  lads' 
purchase  of  the  pistols.' 

f  What  a  dreadful  thing  to  say  ! '  cried  the  Crown 
Princess,  to  whom  he  made  the  remark.  She  was 
a  religious  person ;  her  early  training  had  been 


xi  HELIANTHUS  201 

evangelical,  and  she  really  saw  the  finger  of  Provi- 
dence distinctly  in  the  fact  that  all  three  bullets 
had  hit  the  plane-tree  instead  of  reaching  her  father- 
in-law. 

' It  seems  to  me  an  indisputable  fact,'  replied 
Othyris. 

4  You  would  say,  then,'  she  continued,  ( that 
Christ  should  have  prevented  Lazarus  dying,  instead 
of  raising  him  from  the  tomb  ?  ' 

f  I  imagine  it  would  have  been  kinder  to  Lazarus,' 
said  Othyris. 

She  was  still  more  shocked. 

f  It  is  so  sad,'  she  murmured,  { so  grievously  sad, 
that  you  are  so  Voltairean  ! ' 

Othyris  laughed. 

*  Oh,  surely  I  am  of  a  later  date  than  Voltaire ! 
And  I  am  not  so  meritorious  as  he,'  he  added.     f  I 
have  not  yet  saved  my  Calas.' 

*  Perhaps  you  will  feel  it  your  duty  to  save  these 
three  assassins  ? ' 

f  If  there  were  a  chance  that  I  could  do  so,  I 
would  try  to  save  them  from  a  violent  death.' 

I  You  cannot  speak  seriously.' 

I 1  do,  indeed.     Should  I  jest  on  such  a  subject  ? ' 

*  On  what  grounds  would  you  save  them  ? ' 

f  On  many.  That  they  are  young ;  that  they 
were  deluded ;  that  they  had  hitherto  borne  good 
characters  ;  that  their  shots  all  missed  their  mark ; 
that  no  harm  was  done  ;  and,  beyond  all,  that  a  ruler 
should  always  be  merciful  and  magnanimous.' 

c  But  it  is  owing  to  the  country  to  set  an  example.' 

c  Oh,   the   poor    country !     We    owe  it  so  many 

things  that  we  never  pay  to  it !     Surely  an  example 

of  clemency  is  the  highest  example  that  can  be  set  ? ' 


202  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

f  Clemency  is  a  great  virtue,  no  doubt/  said  his 
sister-in-law,  sorely  troubled  in  her  ethics,  as  good 
women  often  are.  '  And  I  am  sure  your  father 
would  be  inclined  to  exercise  it.' 

Othyris  was  silent.  He  thought  that  when  his 
father  should  show  clemency  the  marble  lions  on 
the  quay  would  walk. 

t  If  he  were  sure  that  it  would  be  understood,' 
she  added.  f  Not  misinterpreted.  The  people  are 
so  apt  to  take  kindness  as  meaning  fear.' 

f  The  people  are  not  often  tried  in  that  way.  We 
are  always  a  cheval  on  our  rights,  using  them  as  the 
Cossacks  their  knouts.  The  King  would  be  the  last 
man  to  lay  down  his  knout.' 

(  The  King  will  do  nothing  in  the  matter  himself. 
He  will  follow  what  his  Ministers  advise,  and  what 
the  judges  of  his  courts  may  decide ;  he  will  allow 
the  law  to  take  its  course,  that  is  all  he  will  do ;  he 
will  exercise  no  personal  power,  he  will  give  no 
personal  opinion.' 

£  But  it  is  precisely  in  such  a  matter  as  this  that 
he  could  use  his  personal  influence  usefully  and  well. 
He  is  the  offended  person,  he  was  the  intended 
victim  ;  he  would  possess  an  absolute  right  to  be  as 
merciful  as  his  wishes  might  lead  him  to  be.  In 
these  matters,  with  people  in  general,  the  common 
law  is  inexorable.  It  does  not  allow  the  person 
injured  to  save  the  injurer,  or  the  intending  injurer, 
from  legal  punishment.  It  is  one  of  the  most  caustic 
satires  on  Christian  nations  that  no  man  may  forgive 
his  own  injuries  if  once  the  law  has  got  hold  of  them  ; 
that  no  man  is  allowed  to  rescue  his  enemies  from 
the  sentence  passed  on  them  by  others.  But  the 
King  has  this  advantage  over  all  other  men,  that  he 


xr  HELIANTHUS  203 

can,  if  he  please,  pardon  and  set  free  his  foes.  He 
can  use  his  prerogative  to  annul  the  capital  sentence 
of  the  law.  True,  in  general  usage,  this  right  is 
exercised  on  his  behalf  by  the  Minister  of  Justice  ; 
but  he  can  at  any  time  exercise  it  himself;  and 
what  time  would  be  so  fitting  as  this,  when  the 
accused  (who  will  be  to-morrow  the  condemned) 
have  been  guilty  of  a  personal  offence  against  himself, 
and  are  scarcely  more  than  mere  boys  in  years  ?  I 
am  quite  sure  that  such  an  act  would  be  not  only 
generous  but  most  politic,  most  wise.  It  would  go 
to  the  heart  of  the  people  of  Helianthus.' 

The  Crown  Princess  sighed  and  dropped  stitches 
in  her  stocking. 

c  What  you  say  is  most  touching,  and  in  a 
measure  quite  true;  but,  my  dear  Elim,  it  is  not  by 
the  heart  that  a  sovereign  can  rule, — it  is  by  the 
head.  It  is  sometimes  more  salutary  (even  in  the 
end  more  merciful)  to  inspire  terror  than  affection. 
The  populace  may  applaud  a  romantic  benevolence ; 
but  what  they  obey  is,  alas  !  that  which  they  fear.' 

c  He  is  called  the  father  of  his  people ! '  said 
Othyris  bitterly. 

c  Fathers  must  chasten,'  said  his  sister-in-law. 

*  But   fathers    do   not  slay  their    sons  !     In    the 
power  to  exercise  mercy,  there  seems  to  me  to  lie 
the  supreme  privilege  of  royalty  ;  but  no  one  in  our 
day  uses  it.     The  Code  is  the  only  Holy  Writ.' 

c  The  Code  is  the  supreme  law  of  the  country  ! ' 
said  his  sister-in-law. 

*  No  doubt,  and  perhaps  the  judges    could  not 
give  any  other   verdict,  the  law  being  what  it  is  ; 
but  it  is  precisely  in  such  a  case  that  the  royal  prerog- 
ative of  mercy  might  be  exercised ;  that  "  Go,  and 


204  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

sin  no  more,"  might  be  said  by  the  head  of  the 
State.' 

She  sighed  again,  and  her  needles  clicked  nervously 
in  the  silence.  She  was  by  nature  full  of  kind  and 
tender  instincts,  but  these  had  been  steeped  in  an 
atmosphere  of  conventionality  and  absolutism  till 
they  were  dry  and  stiff,  the  life  crushed  out  of 
them  under  the  pressure,  like  flowers  in  a  hortus 
siccus. 

Othyris  looked  at  her  with  some  derision,  and 
some  compassion,  and  with  a  sense  of  infinite  sadness. 
Herself,  she  would  not  have  hurt  a  fly,  or  have  ever 
avenged  the  cruellest  wound  ;  but  she  had  been  so 
trained  and  so  saturated  with  prejudice,  that  she 
could  see  only  justice  in  a  judicial  murder,  and  only 
strength  and  right  in  an  inexorable  vengeance. 
What  use  was  it  to  argue  with  one  whose  mind  was 
closed  to  argument  as  a  battened-down  port-hole  is 
closed  to  the  surging  of  the  sea-waves  ?  Hundreds 
of  times  had  he  renewed  such  discussions  with  her, 
only  to  be  met  by  that  calm  resistance  of  a  narrow 
obstinacy  which  regarded  itself  as  a  religious  duty. 

*  Look  at  me  and  answer  me,  Gertrude,'  he  said 
after  long  silence.     c  Do  you  seriously  believe  that 
it  is  either  right,  or  necessary,  or  wise,  to  kill,  in  cold 
blood,  three  youths  under  twenty  years  of  age  for 
an  abortive  attempt  which  did  no  harm  to  any  one 
or  anything  ? ' 

She  raised  her  head  and  looked  at  him. 

*  It   is  a  question    of   State  which    it    does    not 
become  me  to  discuss  or  to  decide.     Nor  does  it 
become  you,  my  dear  brother-in-law.     Remember, 
Elim,  if  you  make  yourself  the  apologist  of  your 
father's    enemies  there  are  many  who  will  remark 


xi  HELIANTHUS  205 

that  his  death  would  have  left  only  one  other  life 
between  you  and  the  throne.' 

A  hot  flush  of  indignation  rose  over  his  face. 

'  You  !'  he  exclaimed.  'You  can  say  this  horrible 
thing  to  me,  or  think  it  ? ' 

f  I  neither  say,  nor  think  it,  dear  Elim.  I  say 
that  there  are  many  who  will  attribute  base  motives 
to  your  defence  of  the  anarchists  who  attempted 
your  father's  life.  It  is  not  the  part  of  a  son,  it  is 
not  the  part  of  a  prince,  to  defend  such  persons. 
They  have  their  own  legal  defenders.  Leave  them 
to  those.' 

f  You,  a  religious  woman,  half  a  saint,  do  not 
believe  in  the  supreme  obligation  of  acting  according 
to  one's  convictions  whatever  construction  may  be 
put  on  those  ?  You  do  not  believe  that  the  exercise 
of  mercy  is  the  most  divine  attribute  of  a  human 
character  ? ' 

f  It  is  not  either  you  or  I  who  can  exercise  it 
in  this  instance,  and  neither  you  nor  I  can  be  entitled 
to  criticise  the  actions  of  one  whose  first  subjects  we 
both  are,  and  to  whose  measures  we  are  both  bound 
to  give  an  implicit  and  unquestioning  respect.' 

*  Respect   a   brutal  vengeance  ?     Where   are   the 
precepts  of  your  religion  ? ' 

f  Hush  !  Hush  !  You  distress  me  unspeakably. 
You  should  not  even  think  such  things  in  the  solitude 
of  your  chamber.' 

*  If  I  must  neither  think  nor  act,  if  my  utterances 
on  their  behalf  would  only  confirm  and  hasten  the 
death-warrant  of  those  unhappy  boys,  I  will  leave  the 
country,  in  order  that  I  may  not  hear  the  weeping 
of  their  mothers,  and  the  sound  of  the  quicklime 
being  thrown  on  their  young  bodies.' 


206  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

f  To  leave  the  kingdom  you  must  have  your 
father's  consent,  both  as  your  king  and  your  com- 
manding officer/ 

*  I  am  a  slave,  then  ! ' 

'  Acquiescence  in  duty  is  not  slavery.' 

f  I  decline  to  see  duty  where  you  see  it.  What 
you  call  duty  is  a  mere  fetish  to  which  you  sacrifice 
and  slay  all  your  best  instincts,  all  your  most  humane 
impulses,  all  your  upright  honesty  of  purpose,  all  the 
sensitive  feelers  of  your  conscience.' 

c  I  do  not  think  so,'  said  his  sister-in-law  calmly ; 
and  she  moved  her  knitting-needles  in  and  out  with 
even  measure ;  she  had  been  disturbed  and  troubled 
for  a  moment  by  his  arguments,  but  she  had  now 
regained  her  placid  and  unquestioning  belief  in  the 
dogma  perpetually  taught  to  her  from  her  cradle. 

'  You  ought  to  pity  these  boys  as  you  pity  mis- 
guided children.' 

f  Of  course  one  pities  them,  in  a  sense.  One 
pities  all  guilty  persons.  But  one  must  be  careful 
not  to  allow  one's  compassion  to  blind  one's  sense  of 
right  and  wrong.' 

f  Hate  the  sin  and  love  the  sinner.  Is  not  that 
what  one  ought  to  do  ? ' 

Princess  Gertrude  shuddered. 

f  Love  a  regicide  ?  —  oh,  my  dear  Elim  !  Christ 
Himself  would  not  enjoin  that.' 

*  Why    is    a    regicide     worse     than    any    other 
murderer  ? ' 

'  Pray,  if  you  think  such  things,  do  not  say  them 
to  me/ 

f  Well,  tell  me  why.  Argue  with  me  —  do  not 
muzzle  me/ 

But    she    was    obstinately    mute.     The    subject 


xi  HELIANTHUS  207 

seemed  to  her  too  horrible,  too  blasphemous,  too 
diabolical,  to  be  discussed  in  speech.  That  the  son 
of  a  king  should  think  the  assassination  of  a  king  a 
crime  on  the  same  level  as  the  murder  of  a  shoeblack 
or  a  shepherd,  appeared  to  her  impious. 

'  Really  I  cannot  listen  to  you  when  you  are  in 
such  terrible  moods  as  this,'  she  said  nervously. 
*  A  king  is  the  Lord's  Anointed  !  His  person  is 
sacred.' 

{ Indeed  ? '  said  Othyris,  with  sarcastic  incredulity. 
'  Then  it  ought  also  to  be  invulnerable.  A  sovereign 
ought  not  even  to  have  the  heel  of  Achilles.  But  he 
has.' 

She  was  silent ;  she  dared  not  blame  Providence 
for  not  having  made  monarchs  bullet-proof.  Yet 
she  could  not  either  assert  that  they  were  so.  It  was 
one  of  those  mysteries  which  she  was  accustomed  to 
put  away  in  the  innermost  chambers  of  her  mind,  in 
faith  and  fear,  there  unexamined  to  await  the  will 
of  the  Most  High  for  explanation. 


CHAPTER   XII 

ALMOST  the  only  person  in  Helios  whom  Elim, 
Duke  of  Othyris,  counted  as  his  friend  was,  para- 
doxically enough,  the  editor  of  a  small  newspaper  of 
pronounced  republican  sympathies.  Ednor  was  a 
scholar  and  a  liberty-loving  enthusiast ;  on  both  of 
which  accounts  his  lot  in  Helios  was  an  unhappy 
one.  He  wrote  all  the  articles  for  his  little  journal 
himself,  and  the  views  which  were  expressed  in  its 
columns  frequently  earned  for  him  the  imposition 
of  heavy  fines  and  even  occasional  periods  of  im- 
prisonment or  exile.  When  he  was  fortunate  enough 
to  have  his  freedom,  he  lived  in  a  garret  in  the 
poorest  and  lowest  quarter  of  the  town ;  and  there 
Othyris  used  to  visit  him  as  frequently  as  he  could 
manage  to  do  so  without  attracting  attention. 

On  one  of  these  visits,  in  the  summer  after  the 
fall  of  the  Ivory  Tower,  Ednor  happened  to  mention 
that  he  had  just  been  to  see  Platon  Illyris,  the  old 
hero  who  had  freed  Helianthus  from  the  foreign 
yoke  half  a  century  before,  but  whose  glorious 
victories  in  the  War  of  Independence  his  former 
comrade-in-arms,  the  first  Theodoric,  had  basely 
utilised,  at  the  psychological  moment,  to  seize  the 
vacant  throne  for  the  House  of  Gunderode.  To 
Ednor's  great  astonishment  Othyris  appeared  not  to 

208 


CHAP,  xii  HELIANTHUS  209 

be  aware  of  the  fact  that  Illyris  was  now  living  in 
obscurity  and  retirement  close  to  Helios. 

*  Is  it  possible,  sir/  he  asked   Othyris,  fthat  you 
did  not  know  it  ? ' 

'No,  I  never  had  a  hint  of  it.' 

{ The  police. know  it :  have  known  it  for  years.' 

<  And  my  father,  I  suppose  ? ' 

4  No  doubt  the  King  must  always  have  been  aware 
of  it.' 

Othyris  sprang  to  his  feet,  speaking  with  a  deter- 
mination he  rarely  displayed. 

f  I  will  go  and  see  Platon  Illyris  to-morrow  ;  he 
is  the  greatest  man  that  Helianthus  ever  possessed.' 

f  His  greatness  dates  from  very  long  ago.' 

c  So  does  Homer's,'  said  Othyris,  with  irritation. 
Who  was  there  in  the  present  generation  worthy  to 
hold  a  lantern  to  light  the  steps  of  the  old  hero  of 
Argileion  and  of  Samaris  ? 

That  he  himself  should  have  been  ignorant  of  the 
presence  in  the  country  of  such  a  man  seemed  to 
him  almost  criminal  in  its  affront  to  a  mighty 
past. 

'  Sir,'  said  Ednor,  with  hesitation,  '  your  royal 
father  is  very  adverse  to  your  liberal  opinions,  to 
your  protection  of  liberal  thinkers,  to  your  avowed 
antagonism  to  the  existing  institutions  (to  use  the 
newspaper  phrase) ;  he  will  remember  (if  you  forget) 
that  Platon  Illyris  was  put  in  chains  by  your  grand- 
sire,  the  late  sovereign,  Theodoric.  For  you,  sir, 
to  visit  him  — will  it  be  prudent  ?  ' 

£  That  is  not  a  question  I  ask  myself.' 

*  No ;  but  when  others  are  involved,  might  you 
not  ask  it  ? ' 

Othyris  was  surprised. 


210  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

'  How  could  my  visit  hurt  him  ?  It  might  be  held 
to  compromise  me,  but  not  him.' 

'  I  fear  that  it  would  do  both,  sir.' 

Othyris  rose  with  some  impatience ;  when  contra- 
dicted he  was  apt  to  remember  that  he  was  a  prince. 

*  My  father,  the  King,  holds  what  views  he  thinks 
right.  I  hold  mine.  Had  I  dreamed  that  the  hero 
of  Argileion  was  dwelling  near  Helios,  he  should  not 
have  waited  so  long  for  the  little  I  can  do  to  show 
him  my  profound  respect.' 
.Ednor  sighed  and  desisted  from  argument. 

Such  a  visit  seemed  to  him  a  great  imprudence, 
certain  to  cause  great  risk  of  troublous  entanglements, 
but  he  saw  that  to  attempt  to  dissuade  Othyris  from 
it  would  be  waste  of  words.  The  utmost  he  could 
hope  to  do  would  be  to  endeavour  to  have  this  im- 
prudence kept  secret,  or,  at  the  least,  minimised. 

Othyris  bade  his  friend  adieu  and  descended  the 
break-neck  staircase  rapidly ;  he  said  to  himself, 
(  What  is  worth  doing  at  all,  is  best  done  quickly'; 
and  he  went  out  into  the  street,  where  the  amber  light 
of  a  summer  afternoon  was  shining  on  the  uneven 
stones,  the  moss-grown  walls,  the  many-coloured  rags. 
He  was  free  from  all  serious  engagements.  Women 
were  awaiting  him  at  more  than  one  afternoon  recep- 
tion, and  longing  for  the  presence  of  f  le  bel  Elim,' 
'  YAltesse  frise,  '  le  Due  dore,  f  le  Prince  charmant ' ; 
but  the  disappointment  he  would  inflict  on  these  fair 
creatures  did  not  touch  him  greatly. 

That  afternoon,  by  a  rare  chance,  he  found  him- 
self free  and  alone.  So  fortunate  a  coincidence 
might  not,  he  knew,  occur  again  for  weeks.  He 
took  it  as  it  offered  ;  and  hastened  to  leave  the 
quarter  he  was  in,  which  was  the  poorest  and  lowest, 


XII 


HELIANTHUS  211 


the  Montmarte  and  the  Marais,  of  Helios,  and  go 
out  by  the  north  gate  towards  the  slopes  of  the 
Helichrysum  hills,  the  spurs  of  the  great  mountain 
range  called  Mount  Atys.  A  few  persons  recog- 
nised him,  and  uncovered  their  heads  as  he  passed  ; 
but  for  the  greater  part  of  the  way  he  was  left  un- 
noticed, much  to  his  satisfaction.  It  never  occurred 
to  the  majority  that  this  pedestrian  could  possibly  be 
a  prince.  The  people  never  easily  understand  that 
those  who  can  ride  or  drive  at  pleasure  may  possibly 
prefer  to  walk.  Those  who  are  deprived  of  all 
luxury  can  never  comprehend  that  luxury  may  be- 
come monotonous  and  tiresome. 

Most  of  the  dwellers  in  these  streets  were  engaged 
in  their  various  daily  labours,  but  the  old  dark  houses 
with  grated  windows  and  iron-plated  doors  were  gay 
with  many-coloured  rags  and  climbing  plants  blos- 
soming over  their  balconies ;  mediaeval  lanthorns 
swung  on  chains  from  their  walls,  and  storks  were 
building  their  nests  on  the  roofs ;  beautiful  olive- 
skinned  children  rolled  in  play  with  merry  dogs  on 
the  uneven  stones,  and  old  men  and  women  slept  on 
the  steps  of  churches  which  had  once  been  classic 
temples ;  and,  ever  and  again  (the  singer  unseen), 
some  soft  sweet  voice  was  heard,  falling  down 
through  the  air,  as  a  nightingale's,  in  showers  of 
liquid  sound.  In  these  quarters  the  King's  second 
son  was  well  known,  but  few  recognised  him  as  he  went 
rapidly  and  alone  up  the  steep,  uneven,  paven  high- 
way which  led  to  the  lower  slopes  of  Mount  Atys. 

Once  outside  the  barrier  of  the  town,  with  its  high 

3  O 

grey  walls  and  its  great  entrance-gate,  called  the  Gate 
of  Olives,  the  soft  and  radiant  landscape  without 
broke  full  upon  his  sight,  the  terraces  of  the  olive 


212  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

plantations  rising  one  above  each  other  in  lofty  tiers, 
their  sad,  silver-grey  foliage  relieved  at  frequent  in- 
tervals by  the  white  blossoms  of  the  wild  peach-  and 
pear-trees.  The  day  was  brilliant,  and  its  full  beauty 
faced  him  as  he  passed  the  guards  of  the  town,  the 
customs-officials,  and  the  soldiers  standing  sentinel 
under  the  portcullis  of  the  city  gates,  who  all  has- 
tened in  eager  obsequiousness  to  salute  him  and  to 
present  arms.  Once  beyond  these  huge  Cyclopean 
walls  and  ponderous  iron  doors,  he  was  alone  with 
the  rural  solitudes,  which  on  this  side  of  the  town 
were  not  marred  by  any  modern  agriculture  or  vul- 
garity-exhaling suburban  erections. 

The  grass  of  the  fields  grew  close  up  to  the  city 
bastions,  and  the  rivulets  ran  down  from  the  woods 
to  fill  their  moat.  Othyris  drew  in  with  a  deep 
breath  the  aromatic  air  which  blew  freshly  from  the 
mountains  and  valleys  of  the  alps  of  Atys,  and 
thought  that  he  was  much  better  here  than  in  the 
perfumed  and  crowded  drawing-rooms  of  the  great 
ladies  of  Helios,  flattered  and  wooed  by  honeyed 
lying  lips,  and  bound  to  lie  sweetly  to  the  liars  in 
return.  It  was  rarely  at  this  season  that  he  could 
escape  thus  into  the  solitude  and  freshness  of  the 
country,  and  the  escape  was  the  more  delightful  to 
him  from  its  rarity,  and  its  vague  forbidden  flavour 
of  the  hole  buissonniere. 

In  an  aged  pear-tree  by  the  roadside  two  golden 
orioles  were  at  work  on  a  half-made  nest  among  the 
white  clusters  of  the  blossoms ;  he  paused  and 
watched  them,  then  went  on  his  way  the  happier  for 
the  sight. 

The  olive  woods  needed  little  culture.  There 
were  no  labourers  under  the  trees.  Peasants  were 


xii  HELIANTHUS  213 

few  and  far  between  upon  these  hills.  The  sylvan 
solitudes  were  in  perfect  repose.  The  murmur  of 
the  sea  was  audible  in  the  stillness,  but  the  sea  was 
unseen.  In  the  distance,  thrusting  their  grand  heads 
into  the  white  cirrus  clouds,  were  the  high  crests  of 
the  snow  mountains,  blue  as  sapphires,  spiritual  and 
glorious  as  the  dream-palaces  which  poets  visit  in 
their  sleep. 

A  narrow  footpath  wound  upward  for  several  miles 
between  the  trees  and  the  great  boulders  of  granite 
and  marble,  and  led  to  the  district  which  was  known 
as  Aquilegia.  The  way  was  strange  to  Othyris, 
and  he  met  no  one ;  but  he  had  been  carefully 
directed  by  Ednor ;  and  at  a  certain  point  indicated, 
where  an  old  moss-grown  conduit  covered  a  water- 
spring,  which  trickled  down  and  crossed  the  hill-road, 
he  came  in  sight  of  a  low  white  house,  with  two 
cedars  of  Lebanon  towering  behind  it,  and  with  a 
group  of  black  poplars  interrupting  the  growth  of  the 
olive-trees.  He  stood  still  and  looked  at  it  with 
emotion. 

To  him  it  looked  scarcely  more  than  a  cattle-shed, 
this  little,  obscure  dwelling,  which  sheltered  the 
greatest  life  in  Helianthus,  whilst  he  and  his  were 
lodged  in  the  grand  palaces,  the  mighty  castles,  the 
villas,  the  parks,  the  gardens,  to  which  they  had  no 
more  title  than  the  hunter  to  the  condor's  nest,  the 
angler  to  the  beaver's  dam ! 

Othyris  stood  still  a  few  moments,  looking  up  at 
the  vast,  straight  stems  of  the  cedars,  sentinels  set  by 
nature  over  the  grave  of  a  buried  genius.  Then  he 
went  forward,  and  upward,  until  he  came  upon  the 
clear  space  of  rough  grass  which  stretched  before  the 
house.  He  saw  no  one ;  but  the  door  of  the  house 


2i4  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

stood  open,  and  he  heard  the  sound  of  some  one 
unseen  on  the  other  side  of  the  house,  drawing  up  a 
bucket  from  a  well. 

He  hesitated  a  few  moments,  wondering  if  he 
should  offend :  the  sins  of  his  forefathers  felt  like 
lead  upon  his  spirit.  In  whose  name,  by  what  title, 
did  he  venture  there  ? 

It  was  a  square  house,  chiefly  built  of  the  blocks 
of  marble  of  a  ruined  temple,  and  ennobled  by  a  fine 
and  ancient  frieze  along  its  frontage,  representing  the 
history  of  the  Golden  Fleece.  There  was  no  garden ; 
but  on  the  rough  grass  surrounding  the  house  there 
grew  many  rose-bushes  and  myrtle-bushes ;  the  rest 
of  the  hillside  was  a  forest  of  olives  —  olives  old, 
unpruned,  with  great  gnarled  trunks,  beneath  which 
the  flowers  of  spring  delighted  to  live  sheltered  and 
to  blossom  unmolested. 

There  were  here  and  there  between  them  some 
gigantic  oaks  and  some  aged  laurels.  Between  the 
dark  grey  olive  wood  and  the  pale  grey  olive  foliage, 
the  sea,  visible  from  this  height,  sparkled  in  sunshine 
and  fumed  in  storm,  the  semicircle  of  the  dazzling 
city  curving  in  sight  on  the  eastern  side  of  the  bay. 

A  very  large  dog  of  the  Ulmer  breed,  lying  on 
the  threshold,  rose  and  advanced  with  an  angry 
growl  and  a  deep  rolling  bay. 

Othyris  put  out  his  hand. 

*  Good  dog,  I  come  in  true  faith.' 

A  voice,  from  the  casement  immediately  above, 
called  to  the  dog. 

c  Ajax,  Ajax,  be  quiet ! ' 

The  dog  looked  up  to  some  invisible  speaker, 
obeyed  and  was  silent,  standing  on  the  watch,  half- 
reassured,  half-doubtful. 


xii  HELIANTHUS  215 

*  Ajax,  be  friends  with  me,'  said  Othyris.     ' I  am 
a  friend  of  your  race.' 

The  great  dog  allowed  himself  to  be  caressed. 

Othyris  looked  up  to  the  narrow  aperture  above, 
which  had  a  sculptured  coping  and  an  iron  grating ; 
ivy  and  the  Madonna's  herb  hung  all  about  it,  so 
that  it  was  partially  concealed  by  them.  He  could 
not  see  the  speaker  who  had  called  to  Ajax,  and  the 
dwelling  seemed  deserted ;  it  had  no  sign  of  life 
except  the  great  dog  and  the  innumerable  swallows 
flying  in  and  out  or  its  verdure,  above  its  roof,  and 
between  the  trees  around  it. 

It  was  solitary  and  solemn,  as  befitted  the  tomb  of 
a  great  renown  which  men  had  slighted  and  forgotten. 
Illyris,  like  I  sis,  who  had  been  worshipped  there,  had 
no  place  in  the  world  of  living  men ;  the  fires  which 
had  burned  on  so  many  altars  for  him  were  cold  as 
those  which  had  flamed  for  her. 

Othyris,  receiving  no  further  opposition  from  the 
dog,  ventured  across  the  marble  step  of  the  entrance. 
He  found  himself  in  a  small,  stone-paved  passage, 
with  a  square  window,  which  opened  on  to  the 
myrtle-bushes  and  the  unclipt  roses.  An  inner 
door  to  the  left,  also  open,  showed  him  a  room 
lined  and  filled  with  books  ;  in  a  great  black  leather 
chair  an  old  man  was  seated,  a  large  volume  on  his 
knee.  Othyris  knew  that  he  must  see  before  him 
Platon  Illyris. 

He  crossed  the  threshold,  and  bowed  low,  very 
low,  before  that  mighty  figure. 

*  What    do  you   want   here,   whoever  you    are  ? ' 
asked  the  occupant  of  the  chamber,  in  a  voice  still 
deep  and  firm. 

'  I  wished  to  see  Platon  Illyris,'  said  Othyris. 


2i6  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

'  Indeed  ! '  said  the  old  man,  with  a  sceptical  irony 
in  his  tone.  ( And  who  may  you  be  that  wants  to 
see  dead  men?' 

Othyris  hesitated;  he  knew  that  the  name  of  his 
House  stunk  in  the  nostrils  of  Illyris.  But  to  lie 
or  prevaricate  to  the  old  hero  was  repugnant  to 
him  ;  it  seemed  unworthy.  He  hesitated  a  moment 
longer,  then  said : 

*  Sir,  I  am  the  second  son  of  the  King.  I  am 
Elim  of  Gunderode.  Men  call  me  the  Duke  of 
Othyris.' 

The  face  of  Illyris  grew  stern  and  dark ;  his 
broad  brows  contracted ;  his  stooping  form  rose 
erect  in  his  chair. 

'Young  prince,'  he  said  harshly,  'you  do  ill  to 
dig  dead  men  out  of  their  graves.  I  am  in  mine. 
Let  me  be.' 

'  No.     Let  me  speak  with  you  a  little  while.' 

c  Wherefore  ?  A  son  of  your  House  can  be  nought 
to  me  except  an  usurper,  a  tyrant,  a  stranger.' 

f  That  I  understand.  To  you,  it  must  of  necessity 
seem  so.  It  was  not  to  build  up  our  throne  that 
you  gave  your  blood  and  your  brethren.' 

The  old  man  looked  at  him  with  the  keenness  of 
other  days  lighting  up  his  eyes. 

4  Such  words  are  strange  in  your  mouth.  You 
are  the  great-grandson  of  the  traitor  Theodoric.' 

Othyris  coloured  and  winced  at  the  words,  but  he 
did  not  resent  them. 

A  tremor  of  remembrance  and  rage  passed  through 
the  old  man's  large  and  bony  frame.  He  made  a 
movement  of  both  hands,  as  of  one  who  pushes 
away  some  unclean  and  clinging  thing. 

cYou  are  Princes  in  Helianthus,'  he  said  harshly, 


xii  HELIANTHUS  217 

{ let  that  content  you.  Do  not  grudge  me  a  runlet 
of  cold  water,  a  stone  cell,  a  book,  the  air  of  the 
hills.  Get  you  gone,  young  man.  Go  back  to  your 
purple  and  fine  linen.' 

'  Sir,'  said  Othyris,  c  if  those  things  satisfied  me, 
should  I  be  here  ? ' 

'  Who  knows  ?  Idlers  go  to  gape  at  a  sick  and 
sightless  lion  in  his  cage.  I  was  a  lion  once,  but 
your  great-grandsire's  nets  were  stronger  than  was 
my  strength.  Get  you  gone.' 

But  Othyris  lingered,  standing  before  the  vener- 
able figure  with  the  folio  volume  open  on  its  knees. 

He  had  come,  humbly,  as  a  scholar  and  disciple, 
when  he  might  have  come  with  pomp  and  power ;  he 
had  come  as  a  suppliant,  when  he  might  have  come 
in  authority ;  he  had  come  with  his  heart  in  his 
hand,  strongly  moved  and  voluntarily  putting  aside 
his  high  estate  ;  —  and  he  was  received  as  an  intruder 
who  had  broken  in  where  he  had  no  right  to  enter. 
He  controlled  his  irritation  and  mortification  with 
difficulty  ;  keeping  always  before  him,  as  check  upon 
his  anger,  his  strong  sense  of  the  great  wrongs  done 
by  those  of  his  blood  to  Platon  Illyris,  and  to  the 
nation  for  which  the  aged  hero  had  fought  and 
suffered. 

( If  he  struck  me,'  he  thought,  che  would  be 
within  his  rights.'  So  it  seemed  to  him. 

A  tame  dove  flew  in  over  the  myrtles  and  settled 
on  the  shoulder  of  Illyris,  fluttering  her  wings  and 
cooing  softly. 

1  If  I  wrung  this  creature's  neck  I  should  be  a 
traitor,'  said  the  old  man.  'The  dove  of  Helianthus 
flew  thus  to  your  great-grandsire,  and  he  first  ca- 
ressed, then  choked  her.' 


218  HELIANTHUS  CHAP, 

{ Sir,'  said  Othyris,  c  I  have  said  I  abhor  the 
crimes  of  my  race.  Is  it  fair,  then,  to  reproach  me 
with  them  ?  The  worst  was  done  long  before  my 
birth.  In  what  is  done  now,  I  have  no  more  voice 
than  that  bird  on  your  shoulder.' 

f  You  are  of  the  hawk's  brood.  There  is  a  Gallic 
proverb  :  On  chasse  de  race' 

1  Many  were  traitors  as  well  as  he,  were  they  not?' 
he  answered.  '  The  nation  was  not  true  to  itself. 
Were  nations  true  to  themselves  could  any  man  ever 
enslave  them  ? ' 

Platon  Illyris  struck  his  clenched  hand  on  the 
marble  of  the  window-seat  beside  him. 

c  Where  had  there  been  a  nation  here  except  for 
me  ?  And  your  grandsire  repaid  me  with  a  cell  in 
the  fortress  of  Constantine.' 

e  Sir,  I  know,'  said  Othyris,  with  profound  humil- 
ity. f  It  was  the  blackest  of  all  the  crimes  of  that 
time,  because  the  most  ungrateful.  But  visit  it  not 
on  me.  I  burn  with  shame  for  it.  I  come  hither 
to  ask  your  pardon  for  it.  It  should  cling  like  the 
shirt  of  Nessus  to  my  race.  I  do  not  see  these 
things  as  my  relatives  see  them.  I  have  thought 
for  myself,  and  I  cannot  go,  unless  you  say  that  you 
forgive  my  people.' 

'  And  if  I  said  it,  what  would  the  falsehood  profit 
you  ? ' 

cWhat  does  a  blessing  profit  ?  It  is  a  breath,  an 
idea,  a  murmur,  a  nothing ;  yet  it  may  change  re- 
morse to  peace.' 

{ There  is  no  remorse  to  change  where  there  has 
been  success.' 

c  Sir,  how  can  you  tell  ?  The  death-bed  of 
Theodoric  of  Gunderode  was  visited  by  many 


xii  HELIANTHUS  219 

ghosts.  I  have  heard  old  servants  relate  how,  in 
the  dead  of  night,  unable  to  rest  for  the  phantoms 
of  his  own  thoughts  and  fears,  he  wandered  sleepless 
and  scared  down  the  cypress  alleys  of  Soleia,  crying 
on  dead  men  to  pardon  him,  and  on  hell  to  spare  him.' 

Illyris  was  silent.  His  mind  was  far  away  in 
memories  long  untouched  by  any  call  to  recollection. 

c  I  have  read  the  history  of  our  past  and  of  yours,' 
said  Othyris.  '  You,  sir,  are  the  great  hero  of  that 
epopee,  and  your  sword,  not  his,  cut  the  cords  which 
bound  Helianthus  to  the  knees  of  the  foreign  ruler. 
Helianthus  should  have  been  yours,  not  his/ 

The  finely-formed  hands  of  Illyris,  the  yellow- 
white  of  ivory,  on  which  the  veins  stood  out  like 
ropes,  closed  with  force  on  the  arms  of  his  chair. 

f  Ay  ! '  he  said  bitterly  ;  c  she  had  been  mine  had 
I  so  willed,  perhaps  ;  but  at  what  a  cost,  what  a  cost ! 
The  war  of  brethren  for  long  years  of  strife  ;  an 
endless  duel  between  the  sons  of  the  same  mother. 
They  would  have  made  me  ruler  after  Argileion  and 
Samaris.  They  would  have  put  the  purple  on  my 
shoulders  here  in  Helios,  yonder ;  but  I  was  no 
traitor  to  my  country  ;  I  left  betrayal  to  Theodoric 
of  Gunderode.' 

Othyris  grew  very  white ;  what  he  heard  now 
was  no  more  than  he  had  known  before,  than  he  had 
thought  for  himself  in  his  boyhood  ;  but  it  wounded 
him  cruelly  to  hear  it  said  by  another,  and  that  other 
the  victim  of  the  ingratitude  of  his  race. 

'  He  would  have  had  no  victory  but  for  me,'  said 
Illyris,  '  and  he  repaid  me  by  captivity  and  exile. 
But  that  would  have  been  of  little  matter  if  he  had 
been  true  to  the  nation  ;  but  he  was  false  to  her  ! 
False  as  hell !  If  I  had  chosen,'  he  muttered,  £  if  I 


220  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

had  chosen,  Theodoric  had  never  reigned  in  my 
country.' 

c  I  know  it,  sir,'  said  Othyris. 

Illyris  looked  at  him  in  doubt  and  with  harsh 
scrutiny. 

c  You  are  of  his  blood.  You  enjoy  the  fruits  of 
his  perfidy.' 

*  That  is  true,'  said  Elim,  with  humility.  f  But  I 
am  not  blind ;  I  am  not  a  sophist.  My  conscience 
is  not  to  be  bought.' 

£  That  which  he  betrayed  was  not  merely  men  : 
it  was  the  nation,  it  was  the  country,'  said  Illyris, 
not  heeding  him.  c  Judas  —  Judas  —  Judas  !  He 
entered  the  land  as  a  soldier  of  liberty  ;  he  reigned, 
he  lived,  he  died,  a  king.  What  he  did  to  me  mat- 
tered nothing.  I  was  but  a  human  beast  like  him- 
self. But  the  land  was  holy,  and  he  betrayed  it ! 
The  land  had  received  him  with  hope  as  a  virgin  her 
bridegroom,  and  as  a  wedding  gift  he  brought 
misery  and  bondage  to  the  innocent  who  had 
trusted  him.' 

He  had  risen  from  his  seat  in  the  force  of  his 
passion ;  his  voice  regained  almost  the  strength  of 
its  early  maturity ;  his  sunken  eyes  blazed,  and  his 
Olympian  brows  seemed  clothed  with  thunder. 

Othyris  stood  before  him  as  a  young  and  timid 
pilgrim  may  have  stood  before  the  Zeus,  with  the 
lightnings  in  flame  about  his  head.  He  spoke  no 
word ;  he  dared  offer  no  defence ;  he  knew  that 
every  syllable  of  the  reproach  was  true.  Had  he  not 
said  these  same  things  in  his  own  thoughts  ever  since 
the  earliest  years  of  the  garbled  lessons  given  him  in 
the  story  of  his  race,  and  in  the  share  it  had  played 
in  the  liberation  of  the  country  ? 


XII 


HELIANTHUS  221 


Theodoric  had  been  a  fine  soldier ;  when  he  had 
cried  to  his  troops, '  Follow,  follow,  follow,  children ! ' 
they  had  gone  headlong  after  the  gleam  of  his  naked 
sabre,  and  would  have  followed  him  into  the  jaws  of 
hell  itself.  But  ambition  is  like  a  solvent  acid ;  in  it 
all  pure  and  precious  qualities  dissolve  and  disappear  ; 
and  the  joy  of  adding  territory  to  territory,  treasure 
to  treasure,  title  to  title,  is  as  a  crucible  in  which  all 
other  feelings  are  burnt  up  and  perish  ;  it  is  an  ap- 
petite which  has  the  passions  of  the  miser,  of  the 
conqueror  and  of  the  lover,  all  fused  into  one. 

*  If  you  like  not  to  hear  these  truths  of  the  man 
who  bred   you  and  yours,  why  come  you  hither, 
young  prince  ? ' 

*  They  are  truths,  sir,'  said  Elim  wearily,  f  and  I 
am  tired  of  phrases  and  of  falsehoods.' 

The  old  hero  looked  at  him  with  keen  but  not 
unkind  gaze. 

f  Come  out  from  a  Court,  then,  and  dig  for  your 
daily  bread.  But  you  have  been  bred  and  begotten 
by  tyrants.  If  you  are  the  son  of  John  of  Gunde- 
rode,  you  have  the  blood  in  you  also  of  the  tyrant 
Gregory.' 

The  face  of  Othyris  flushed  painfully. 

4  My  mother  was  a  saint.' 

*  She  was  a  good  and  innocent  woman,  no  doubt,' 
said  Illyris,  more  gently  ;  { you  do  well  to  cherish 
her  memory.' 

Othyris  was  silent.  A  great  and  painful  emotion 
held  him  mute. 

The  old  man  looked  at  him  with  searching  keen- 
ness in  his  still  clear  eyes.  (  What  can  bring  you 
here?'  he  muttered;  *  what  link  can  there  be  be- 
tween an  Illyris  and  a  Gunderode  ? ' 


222  JtiJiLlAJN  IrtUb  CHAP. 

'  Sir,'  said  Othyris,  without  resentment,  c  there  is 
my  reverence  for  you.  It  is  sincere.  May  it  not 
serve  to  atone  in  me  for  a  birth  which  is  no  fault 
of  mine  ? ' 

'  That  is  strange  language  on  a  Gunderode's 
tongue.' 

*  Forget  that  I  am  a  Gunderode.  Think  of  me  as 
a  neophyte,  as  a  volunteer  like  those  who  followed 
your  army.' 

Illyris  was  moved,  but  he  was  incredulous. 

'  Half  a  century  and  more  has  gone  by  since  I  had 
my*  army  behind  me.  The  bones  of  my  legions  lie 
fleshless  in  the  ground.  I  am  a  cripple  who  scarce 
can  move  across  this  narrow  room.  Get  you  gone. 
You  have  the  blood  in  you  of  Theodoric.  I  know 
not  whether  you  mock  me,  or  whether  you  speak  in 
sincerity.  Youth  is  honest  sometimes,  but  what 
friendship  can  there  be  between  myself  and  you?  I 
believed  in  your  great-grandsire's  word,  and  he  lied 
to  me  and  betrayed  me.  I  fought  with  him,  and  he 
stabbed  me  in  the  back.  He  stole  my  bride,  my 
love,  my  queen,  my  Helianthus.  He  violated  her 
on  what  he  called  her  nuptial  bed.  He  called  him- 
self her  choice  when  he  was  but  her  ravisher.  He 
called  himself  the  Perseus  of  her  Andromeda,  and  he 
was  but  the  Minotaur.  Think  you  my  own  fate 
would  have  mattered  to  me  could  I  but  have  seen  my 
country  free,  as  I  had  seen  her  in  the  dreams  of  my 
youth  —  as  I  had  seen  her  in  my  visions  across  the 
smoke  of  battlefields  and  the  flames  of  burning  cities  ? 
Did  ever  I  hesitate  to  risk  my  body  for  her  ?  Her 
cause  was  holy  to  me.  I  lost  for  it  all  that  men  hold 
dear.  Wealth  and  land  and  learning,  the  peace  of 
the  hearth,  the  love  of  woman,  the  joys  of  offspring, 


xii  HELIANTHUS  223 

were  all  as  nought  to  me  beside  my  country.  And 
he — he  —  Theodoric  —  rendered  all  my  losses  vain, 
all  my  life  fruitless,  all  my  aims  empty  and  filled  with 
ashes.  What  did  he  make  of  her  ?  A  vassal  to 
himself;  a  waiter  on  the  will  of  the  great  Powers  ;  a 
victim  of  a  mock  plebiscite  ;  a  slave  bound  down 
under  the  drain  of  taxation,  the  hypocrisy  of  consti- 
tutionalism ;  a  mere  copy  of  the  other  kingdoms  of 
the  world.  My  own  wrongs  I  would  have  forgiven 
to  him  unto  seventy  times  seven  ;  but  the  wrongs  of 
my  country — my  country  which  was  never  his  except 
by  fraud  and  force  —  I  would  not  forgive,  though 
God  Himself  commanded  !  ' 

He  breathed  heavily,  his  eyes  closed  in  exhaustion ; 
the  emotions  and  the  wrongs  of  other  years  surged 
up  in  his  memory  and  sapped  his  remaining  strength ; 
the  torpor  of  great  age  succeeded  the  violence  and 
eloquence  aroused  by  the  visit  of  the  King's  son. 

'  Sir,'  said  the  voice  of  a  woman  behind  him, 
'  leave  him,  I  pray  you,  if  indeed  you  came  in 
sincerity.  He  will  say  no  more  to  you  to-day.  Your 
presence  will  only  anger  and  distress  him  uselessly.' 

Othyris  turned  and  saw  her  with  surprise ;  he  had 
supposed  that  the  old  man  lived  alone,  and  had  not 
expected  to  find  any  other  occupant  of  the  hill  house. 

The  beauty  of  her  form  and  face,  the  repose  and 
gravity  of  her  manner,  the  seriousness  and  limpidity 
of  her  regard  as  her  eyes  met  his,  astonished  him. 
It  was  not  thus  that  women  were  wont  to  look  at 
him. 

c  I  beg  your  pardon,'  he  murmured ;  f  I  was  not 

aware '  He  hesitated  and  coloured,  moved  to 

surprise  and  delight.  In  this  young  recluse  of 
Aquilegia  he  recognised  the  Pallas  Athene  of  the  sea- 


224  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

shore,  seen  by  moonlight  a  year  earlier,  on  the 
occasion  of  his  visit  to  the  ruins  of  the  Ivory  Tower. 

There  was  a  moment's  silence  between  them,  but 
the  embarrassment  was  on  his  side,  not  hers. 

f  You  are  one  of  the  Princes  ?  '  she  said,  as  he  stood 
silent  before  her.  c  I  heard  some  of  your  latest  words 
to  my  great-grandfather.  Why  did  you  come  here? 
It  was  unkind,  ill-judged.' 

c  Unkind  ! '  repeated  Othyris.  *  Unkindness  was 
the  last  thing  in  my  heart.  Ill-judged  ?  Why 
so  ?  What  is  done  in  respect  and  sincerity  cannot 
offend.' 

*  Sir,  you  brought  the  past  with  you,  as  a  man 
brings  his  shadow.  What  can  the  past  of  your  family 
be  to  Platon  Illyris?  Ask  yourself.' 

c  It  is  because  I  am  conscious  of  all  it  means  to  him 
that  I  am  here.' 

f  Why  ?     You  cannot  atone  for  it.' 

f  To  atone  is  seldom  given  to  us.  We  can  only 
regret.  I  come  in  all  sincerity  and  good  faith  to  the 
greatest  man  of  this  country.' 

1  Sir,  there  is  an  impassable  gulf  between  him  and 
you.  It  is  filled  by  the  blood  of  his  countrymen,  of 
his  brethren,  of  his  friends.' 

f  I  had  no  share  in  its  making.' 

'  No  ;  not  you,  but  yours.' 

4  Lady,  you  are  young  to  be  so  harsh.' 

( I  am  not  harsh,  nor  is  he.  Why  did  you  come 
here,  sir  ?  Could  you  expect  welcome  or  obeisance 
from  us  ? ' 

1  No  ;  but  I,  even  I,  might  expect  justice.' 

He  controlled  with  difficulty  his  rising  anger;  the 
humility  with  which  he  had  come  hither  had  been 
sincere,  even  extreme  in  its  sincerity ;  but  long  habit 


xii  HELIANTHUS  225 

and  the  perpetual  usage  of  daily  life,  the  deference  of 
the  world  and  of  all  its  classes  to  him  and  his,  had 
made  him  unconsciously  expect  consideration,  even 
gratitude,  in  return. 

*  Justice,'  she  repeated  slowly.  How  often  is  it 
invoked  and  invoked  in  vain !  If  royal  races  were, 
once  or  twice  in  the  world's  history,  denied  it,  could 
they  complain  ?  Is  not  the  bread  of  injustice  eaten 
beside  millions  of  poor  men's  cold  hearths,  all  the 
year  long,  throughout  the  earth  ? 

'  He  would  not  be  unjust  even  to  you,'  she  said 
with  a  movement  of  the  hand  towards  the  now 
motionless  form  of  her  relative.  'You  are  not  to 
blame  for  the  accident  of  your  birth,  for  the 
treacherous  blood  that  you  inherit.  But  stay  down 
yonder  in  your  rose-gardens.  You  have  nothing  to 
do  with  us.  I  am  a  working  woman,  and  he  is  an 
old,  very  old  man,  well-nigh  dead,  and  utterly 
forgotten.' 

She  passed  out  before  him  to  the  entrance  and 
laid  her  right  hand  upon  the  door  still  standing 
open. 

c  Go,  sir/  she  said,  and  she  pointed  with  her  left 
hand  to  the  path  beneath  the  olive-trees.  She  was 
wholly  unconscious  of  it,  but  the  simplicity  and  the 
dignity  of  her  attitude  and  gesture  moved  him  to  an 
amazed  and  intense  admiration.  The  red  reflection 
of  the  sun,  then  sinking  into  the  sea  amidst  grand 
pomp  of  evening  clouds,  shone  on  the  clear  cold 
beauty  of  her  face,  its  pure  outline,  its  fair  colour, 
its  soft  and  thick  dark  hair,  wound  about  her  head 
in  massive  braids. 

'  What  a  beautiful  woman  ! '  he  thought,  f  what 
a  beautiful  woman  ! '  and,  still  in  all  sincerity,  but 
Q 


226  HELIANTHUS  CHAP,  xn 

spurred  by  the  longing  to  see  more  of  her  beauty, 
and  to  conquer  her  coldness,  he  drew  back  a  moment 
on  the  threshold,  and  met  once  more  the  calm  gaze 
of  her  meditative  eyes. 

*  I  am  of  the  reigning  House  of  Gunderode,  that 
House  which  is  condemned  and  despised  by  you, 
and  I  dare  offer  no  appeal  against  your  sentence. 
But  I  am  your  great-grandfather's  most  devoted 
disciple ;  and  I  trust  that  time  will  honour  me  by 
giving  me  his  confidence  and  yours.' 

He  bowed  very  low,  as  he  had  done  to  Platon 
Illyris,  and  went  across  the  threshold  of  the  outer 
hall,  on  to  the  rough  grassland  without.  She  did  not 
reply,  but  she  closed  the  door  as  though  to  shut  out 
his  presence,  and  went  within,  calling  the  dog  to  her 
side. 

Othyris  retraced  his  steps  to  the  city. 

There  was  a  great  dinner  that  evening,  followed 
by  a  Court  ball,  and  he  was  barely  in  time  to  be  in 
his  place  at  the  banquet.  It  was  his  office  to  lead  the 
cotillion  at  the  ball ;  but  its  gay  pranks  and  jests 
and  figures  jarred  on  him,  and  he  sighed  for  the 
cool  and  fragrant  silence  of  the  woods  of  Aquilegia. 

'  In  other  times,'  he  thought,  '  princes  kept  fools 
to  jest  for  them ;  now  we  must  play  the  fool  our- 
selves from  morn  till  night ! ' 


CHAPTER   XIII 

IT  was  at  an  engagement  near  a  hamlet  called  Turla 
that  the  army  of  Illyris,  which  had  been  weakened 
by  great  privations  and  exhausted  by  a  long  cam- 
paign in  an  already  ravaged  and  burnt  province,  was 
defeated  by  the  troops  led  by  the  first  Theodoric ; 
and  with  his  horse  killed  under  him,  his  strength 
sapped  by  long  famine,  and  the  few  veterans  of  his 
guard  dead  or  worn  out  around  him,  Illyris  was  taken 
prisoner  by  an  overwhelming  force. 

When  he  was  taken  into  the  tent  of  Theodoric, 
the  latter,  who  owed  to  him  his  entrance  into 
Helianthus,  came  to  meet  him  with  both  hands 
outstretched. 

f  My  old  and  honoured  comrade,'  he  said,  in 
a  tone  of  apology,  *  the  fortunes  of  war  change.' 

Illyris,  standing  erect  in  his  great  height  above 
the  short,  broad,  stout  figure  of  the  head  of  the 
House  of  Gunderode,  put  his  hands  behind  his  back, 
and  beneath  his  eagle's  gaze  the  eyes  of  Theodoric 
fell. 

'  The  fortunes  of  war,  yes,'  said  Illyris,  *  but  the 
laws  of  honour  do  not.' 

Theodoric  understood.  His  dark  skin  grew  pale. 
He  felt  poor,  and  small,  and  mean,  before  this  man 
who  had  driven  the  foreigner  from  the  land  and 

227 


228  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

asked  no  reward,  who  had  given  away  a  kingdom 
and  was  poor  as  Belisarius. 

He  offered  but  a  feeble  resistance  when  his 
Ministers  urged  on  him  that  the  captivity  of  Platon 
Illyris  was  a  necessary  condition  for  the  pacification 
of  the  nation. 

The  fortress  of  Constantine  received  the  liberator 
of  Helianthus. 

His  imprisonment  was  made  as  honourable  and  as 
little  onerous  as  imprisonment  can  ever  be,  but  the 
cage  to  the  lion  is  agony,  and  whether  it  be  a  few 
yards  more  or  less  wide  matters  not  to  the  king  of 
the  desert. 

From  north  to  south,  from  east  to  west,  the 
Helianthine  people  raged  and  fretted,  and  demanded 
the  freedom  of  their  hero ;  but  he  was  not  restored 
to  them.  There  were  already  on  their  newly-won 
liberties  the  bonds  which  accompany  an  accepted 
government ;  and  already  they  were  powerless  to 
break  them  asunder. 

For  five  long  years  Illyris  saw  the  sun  rise  and 
set  over  the  Helianthine  sea  from  the  casements  of 
the  fortress  of  Constantine.  Then  his  sentence 
was  changed  to  exile,  and  secretly,  lest  the  sight  of 
him  and  the  memory  of  him  should  excite  the 
populace,  he  was  conveyed  to  a  steam  vessel  in  the 
Bay  of  Helios,  which  was  bound  for  a  northern 
kingdom — a  vessel  chartered  by  the  government  of 
Theodoric  on  condition  that  she  should  put  into  no 
port  betwixt  Helios  and  her  destination.  The  people 
would  willingly  have  freed  Illyris  at  any  cost ;  but 
they  could  neither  see  him  nor  speak  with  him  ;  they 
had  no  one  to  lead  them  ;  they  were  like  a  rudderless 
boat;  and  already  in  the  country  there  was  that 


xin  HELIANTHUS  229 

dominance  of  financial  and  commercial  interests, 
that  weight  of  personal  egotism,  that  stream  of 
blinding  ambitions,  which  go  with  governments  as 
vapours  with  a  distillery. 

So  the  Gunderode  reigned,  and  Illyris  passed 
away. 

When  the  young  scions  of  the  House  of  Gun- 
derode had  been  taught  the  history  of  the  country 
their  House  reigned  over,  the  name  of  Illyris  had 
been  at  once  blessed  and  cursed  by  those  who  had 
arranged  and  expunged  and  modified  narratives  of 
the  War  of  Independence  for  their  instruction, 
giving  all  the  glory  of  the  liberation  from  foreign 
occupation  to  Theodoric.  Before  he  was  fifteen 
years  old,  Othyris  had  rectified  the  omissions  of  his 
text-books,  and  made  of  Illyris  his  hero ;  but  Tyras 
had  never  been  enough  interested  in  the  past  to 
do  so. 

£  Whoever  plucked  the  pear  we  have  eaten  it,' 
he  sagely  reflected;  and  the  eating  seemed  to  him 
the  principal  exploit,  as  it  seemed  to  the  world  in 
general. 

No  one  could  write  or  speak  of  the  War  of 
Independence  without  speaking  of  Illyris.  But  the 
government  had  striven  to  the  uttermost  to  efface 
his  name.  In  the  public  schools  it  was  dwelt  on  as 
slightly  as  was  possible  by  preceptors  docile  to  those 
who  appointed  and  could  promote  or  dismiss  them  ; 
and  in  this  matter  the  clerical  joined  hands  with  the 
lay  teachers.  The  aged  men  who  had  been  his 
contemporaries  and  his  comrades  became  fewer  and 
fewer  with  every  year ;  and  a  period  which  is  neither 
near  enough  to  possess  the  selfish  interests  of  the 
present,  nor  far  enough  away  to  have  gained  the 


230  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

venerable  patina  of  time,  is  easily  pushed  aside.  It 
is  like  a  painting  which  has  neither  the  freshness  of 
modernity  nor  the  mellowness  of  age.  It  is  too 
well  known,  yet  not  known  well  enough. 

For  a  part  of  his  life  after  the  accession  of 
Theodoric,  Illyris  had  been  perforce  an  exile  ;  but  in 
the  latter  part  of  the  reign  of  Theodoric's  son  and 
successor  he  was  allowed  to  return,  or  rather  his 
unauthorised  return  to  his  country  was  neither  per- 
mitted nor  prohibited,  but  tacitly  allowed,  by  a 
government  which  ignored  his  existence  except  when 
its  minions  collected  his  hearth-tax.  He  lived  out- 
side the  south  gate  of  the  city,  on  a  hillside  covered 
with  olive  orchards  and  forests,  whence  a  large  part 
of  the  southern  bay  of  Helios  was  visible,  and  the 
glories  of  sunrise  seemed  with  every  daybreak  to 
be  the  new  birth  of  the  world.  The  place  was 
called  Aquilegia,  from  the  quantities  of  wild  colum- 
bines which  grew  beneath  its  trees  ;  a  temple  with 
Ionian  columns  which  was  still  standing  in  its 
higher  woods  had  been  in  other  ages  consecrated  to 
the  worship  of  Isis  and  her  son. 

In  this  solitary  place  he  dwelt,  the  world  forgetting, 
by  the  world  forgot,  and  was  now  over  ninety  years 
of  age.  He  had  been  amongst  the  first  and  foremost 
of  the  popular  leaders  to  deliver  his  country  from  a 
foreign  yoke,  and  he  had  lived  to  see  that  the  only 
form  of  liberty  ever  awarded  to  men  is  an  exchange 
of  tyrannies.  The  pack-saddle  is  shifted  from  the 
mule's  back,  only  for  the  sack  of  coals  to  be  placed 
on  it  instead ;  the  burden  alters  in  kind  and  in  name, 
not  in  weight. 

This  knowledge,  and  the  pains  in  old  wounds 
which  ever  and  again  reminded  him  of  the  battlefields 


xin  HELIANTHUS  231 

of  his  manhood,  were  all  that  his  glorious  past  had 
brought  to  him.  Few  pilgrims  ever  came  there  to 
do  him  homage.  The  name  of  Platon  Illyris  was 
certainly  venerated  by  republicans,  by  revolutionaries, 
by  all  students  of  history ;  but  it  was  scarcely  more 
than  a  tradition  to  the  actual  generation ;  it  was  far 
away,  like  the  name  of  Tell  or  of  Washington  ;  men 
have  no  time  in  these  days  to  worship  the  gods  of 
other  years.  Moreover,  although  they  held  his  name 
in  great  reverence,  Illyris  held  their  opinions  and 
actions  in  no  respect  whatever.  He  had  little 
sympathy  with  the  new  order  of  revolutionary  feel- 
ing. Socialism  and  Collectivism  had  little  virility 
or  value  in  his  sight.  His  keen  mind  discerned  the 
tyranny  which  they  would  evolve.  His  robust  and 
independent  theories  had  been  as  different  from  theirs 
as  a  lion  at  large  on  the  plains  of  the  east  is  unlike 
a  lion  caged  in  a  den  of  a  city.  Therefore  few  of 
them  had  ever  come  twice  to  Aquilegia,  or  cared  to 
sustain  twice  the  caustic  and  fiery  sarcasm  which 
rent  their  false  logic  to  ribbons,  the  martial  and 
manly  temper  which  despised  their  gospel  of  com- 
munism and  assassination. 

Old  age  is  always  disagreeable  to  early  manhood, 
which  despises  it  because  it  is  old  age  ;  but  when  it 
has  a  sunset  glory  behind  it  of  a  splendour  of  achieve- 
ment which  the  mists  of  calumny  or  the  night  of 
death  cannot  darken,  then,  of  necessity,  it  is  ex- 
tremely and  unspeakably  offensive  to  young  men, 
especially  to  a  generation  which  has  achieved 
nothing. 

Ednor  indeed  came  there  with  the  reverence  of  a 
disciple  and  the  sympathy  of  a  scholar,  but  Ednor 
was  not  often  free  to  do  what  he  chose.  So, 


232  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

gradually,  an  absolute  solitude  had  been  the  lot  of 
the  hero  of  the  War  of  Independence ;  but  it  was 
not  lamented  by  him ;  he  preferred  the  minds  of 
great  writers  long  dead  to  those  of  the  doctrinaires 
and  the  nihilists  of  modern  thought.  He  had 
become  used  to  his  loneliness,  and  valued  it. 
Loneliness,  if  melancholy,  is  at  least  not  irritating. 
The  mind  of  a  people  is  shallow.  It  soon  forgets. 
For  years  the  Helianthines  cherished  the  name 
and  adored  the  acts  of  their  hero  ;  but  all  public 
evidence  of  their  gratitude  being  unwelcome  to 
those  who  ruled  over  them,  and  even  being  re- 
pressed with  severity,  they  ceased  to  dare  show  what 
they  felt,  and  as  his  own  generation  passed  away  his 
hold  on  the  memory  of  the  nation  became  slighter. 
To  the  generation  which  was  that  of  Othyris  the 
great  patriot  had  become  little  more  than  a  tradition  ; 
and,  like  Othyris,  it  had  ceased  to  remember  that  he 
was  still  a  living  man. 

Scrupulous  and  stern  in  his  estimate  of  the 
obligations  of  honour,  Illyris  preserved  an  absolute 
neutrality  on  all  public  matters.  He  never  went 
outside  the  olive  groves  and  cedar  shadows  of 
Aquilegia ;  and  the  few  who  visited  him  in  that 
solitude  found  him  inexorable  in  his  resolve  to  have 
nothing  to  do  with  revolutionary  politics. 

f  When  a  man  is  as  old  as  I  am,  his  name  is  but 
a  pricked  bladder;  even  the  peas  have  dropped  out 
of  it,'  he  said  to  those  who  urged  him  to  let  them  use 
his  name.  He  knew  that  he  had  liberated  his  country 
once ;  but  that,  through  the  treachery  of  another, 
and  the  unwisdom  perchance  of  himself,  neither  he 
nor  Helianthus  was  free  —  scarcely  freer,  except  in 
semblance,  than  when  the  foreigner  had  ruled  there. 


xni  HELIANTHUS  233 

The  only  companion  of  the  old  hero  in  his  retreat 
in  Aquilegia  was  the  granddaughter  of  one  of  his 
three  dead  sons.  Many  influences  had  combined  to 
make  her  what  she  was,  and  the  silence  and  stately 
gloom  of  her  birthplace,  the  old  northern  city  on 
the  grey  dull  waters,  had  been  to  her  what 
the  darkness  of  a  sunless  chamber  is  to  the 
gladiolus ;  it  had  bleached  the  rose-colour  from  the 
calyx.  She  had  never  known  the  joyousness  of 
youth.  Laughter  had  seldom  parted  her  beautiful 
serious  lips.  She  was  not  sad,  but  she  was  never  gay. 
She  was  what  Athene,  made  mortal,  might  have  been. 
She  had  been  born  in  a  northern  country,  on  a 
northern  sea ;  a  country  of  vast  plains  white  with 
level  frozen  snow  through  long  winters,  and  green 
with  rich  grass  and  covered  by  sleek  herds  and  by 
fat  flocks  in  spring  and  summer,  with  many-coloured 
barges  drifting  slowly  along  streams  and  through 
canals,  and  beautiful  ancient  cities  with  architecture 
fine  and  delicate  as  the  lace-work  for  which  their 
women  were  famous,  and  bell  towers  making  music 
morn  and  eve  over  the  gabled  roofs  and  moss-grown 
walls.  There  she  had  spent  a  peaceful  but  lonesome 
childhood  in  a  town  full  of  mediaeval  legend,  art,  and 
history. 

She  had  much  of  the  beauty  of  a  fine  and  classic 
statue  :  its  harmony  of  line,  its  justness  of  proportion, 
its  purity  of  colour.  One  could  have  fancied  she  was 
a  Greek  goddess  imbued  with  life ;  there  was  some- 
thing in  her  aloof  from  ordinary  existence,  from 
general  humanity  ;  something  which  was  not  arro- 
gance, and  was  still  less  shyness ;  an  immutable 
serenity  which  never  varied,  a  disdain  which  was 
unconscious,  even  when  it  was  unkind. 


234  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

She  had  dwelt  with  poverty,  but  she  had  been 
nourished  on  great  thoughts,  and  she  had  in  her 
veins  the  blood  of  an  ancient  and  heroic  race. 

Her  mother  had  been  a  woman  of  that  northern 
city  on  the  cold  grey  sea ;  the  daughter  of  an 
artisan,  a  worker  in  brass  and  steel ;  she  had  been 
married  for  her  beauty  and  her  piety  by  the  son  of 
Gelon  Illyris,  who,  when  exiled  by  the  Gunderode, 
had  gained  his  living  as  a  gunsmith  in  the  dim  old 
Gothic  seaport  town  which  was  hers  by  birth.  She 
had  died  in  the  early  years  of  her  wedded  life,  and 
her  daughter  had  never  known  her ;  she  grew  up, 
alone  with  her  father,  who  was  heartbroken  by  the 
loss  of  his  wife  in  her  youth.  She  had  been  educated 
by  the  nuns  of  a  solemn  mediseval  refuge  which  stood 
on  the  edge  of  one  of  the  dark  and  sluggish  canals 
of  the  old  streets.  Here  she  had  learned  to  make 
the  beautiful  lace  which  her  mother  had  made  before 
her,  and  here  she  had  learned  other  feminine  arts  and 
crafts,  and  a  power  of  reticence  and  silence  not  common 
to  youth.  From  her  father  she  had  learned  the 
Helianthine  tongue,  the  Helianthine  history,  the 
Helianthine  classics,  and  had  conceived  for  them 
an  impassioned  reverence.  By  him,  also,  she  had 
been  taught  to  hold  in  awe  and  honour  the  great 
hero  from  whose  blood  they  sprang. 

4  Let  us  go  to  him,  father ;  let  us  go,'  she  urged 
many  a  time.  But  the  son  of  Gelon  was  a  tired  and 
sorrowful  man  ;  his  heart  was  in  his  wife's  grave  ;  he 
had  never  seen  the  great  hero  of  his  race,  and 
Helianthus  seemed  to  him  far  off,  very  far  off,  lying 
in  the  warm  southern  light,  washed  by  the  waves  of 
the  Mare  Magnum. 

*  You    can     go     to    him,    child,    when     I     die, 


xin  HELIANTHUS  235 

should  he  be  living  then,'  he  said  to  her,  knowing 
that  he  had  in  him  the  pains  of  a  mortal  disease ; 
and  when  he  did  die,  which  was  in  her  sixteenth  year, 
she  went  straightway  from  his  grave  to  a  southward- 
bound  vessel  loading  in  the  docks.  She  did  not 
know  whether  the  hero  of  her  race  was  living  or 
dead ;  but  Helianthus  was  surely  there,  in  that 
odorous  warmth,  that  amber  light,  that  fragrance  as 
of  dew-wet  roses,  of  which  the  Helianthine  poets  had 
written  in  so  many  different  ages.  She  was  drawn 
by  it  as  the  young  fledged  bird  is  drawn  off  the  nest 
by  the  charm  of  the  balmy  air,  the  smile  of  the  sun- 
beams dancing. 

So  one  day  Platon  Illyris,  standing  in  his  doorway, 
leaning  on  his  great  olive-wood  stick,  saw  a  young 
girl,  dusty  and  travel-stained,  and  clothed  in  black, 
come  up  his  grass-grown  path  between  the  untrimmed 
rose-bushes. 

She  paused  within  a  few  yards  of  the  threshold, 
and  was  silent,  being  afraid. 

f  Who  are  you  ? '  he  asked  her,  in  no  gentle  tones, 
for  he  was  intolerant  of  trespassers. 

She  put  back  the  veil  from  her  head. 

c  I  am  Ilia  Illyris.' 

*  Who  do  you  say  ? ' 

f  I  am  Ilia  Illyris.' 

'  The  grandchild  of  Gelon  ? ' 

'  Yes.' 

A  wave  of  emotion  passed  over  his  stern  features 
as  a  shadow  may  flit  for  a  moment  over  a  marble 
bust. 

'  Why  do  you  come  hither  ? '  he  asked. 

'  I  came  to  see  the  hero  of  Argileion  and 
Samaris.' 


236  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

A  faint  smile  came  on  his  cold,  stern  face.  They 
were  his  greatest  battles. 

'  Is  your  father  dead  ? '  he  asked. 

'Yes.' 

'  You  have  no  one  ? ' 

f  No  one.' 

f  You  cannot  stay  here.' 

f  That  must  be  as  you  will,  sir.' 

He  was  silent ;  the  submission,  immediate  and 
unquestioning,  softened  him.  He  called  to  his 
woman-servant :  — 

c  Maia  !     Come  hither.' 

The  servant  answered  his  call  —  a  strong,  tall, 
bronzed  figure,  in  the  costume  of  the  country,  with 
the  sad,  patient  eyes  of  a  mare  in  the  yoke  of  a  plough. 

*  I  am  here,  master,'  she  answered. 

'  Take  this  child  within,'  he  said  to  her.  f  Cleanse 
her  from  the  dust,  and  give  her  food.  Let  her  rest. 
I  will  see  her  later.' 

'  Come,'  said  the  woman  Maia,  showing  no  sur- 
prise, asking  no  questions. 

Ilia  also  said  nothing,  but  stooped  and  kissed  the 
earth  ;  the  earth  of  her  fathers.  Then  she  went  in- 
doors in  silence  with  Maia. 

Maia  asked  her  no  questions.  Whatever  the 
master  did  was  well  done,  and  beyond  dispute.  Thus 
the  maiden  from  the  north  came  to  dwell  at  Aqui- 
legia. 

Here  in  this  spot,  beautiful  by  nature  and  sad 
from  solitude,  Ilia  passed  seven  years  of  her  youth, 
joylessly,  as  youth  usually  reckons  joy,  but  not 
unhappily ;  in  a  profound  calm,  an  unbroken  peace- 
fulness,  but  also  in  an  unbroken  monotony ;  and 
monotony,  a  couch  of  roses  to  age,  is  often  a  bed  of 


xin  HELIANTHUS  237 

nettles  to  youth.  She  could  not  even  be  certain 
that  she  was  welcome ;  sometimes  she  thought  that 
she  was  only  tolerated,  as  the  storks  were  upon  the 
roof. 

The  years  were  marked  by  the  coming  and  going 
of  those  storks,  of  the  herons,  of  the  swallows,  of 
the  nightingales,  of  the  thrushes,  of  the  quails. 
There  was  little  else  to  mark  time,  except  the  suc- 
cession of  the  wild  flowers,  from  the  January 
celandine  to  the  December  snapdragon.  The  dis- 
tance was  not  much  more  than  three  miles  downward 
through  the  olives  to  the  seaward  road,  leading  on 
the  left  to  the  beach  and  on  the  right  to  the  south 
gate  of  Helios,  called  the  Gate  of  Olives ;  but  the 
city  might  have  been  a  hundred  miles  distant  for 
aught  that  Illyris  or  Ilia  had  to  do  with  it.  Their 
one  woman-servant  went  to  its  market  when  needful. 
Letters  of  friends  there  were  none  for  either  of 
them.  Now  and  then  Ilia  finished  some  of  the  fine 
lace  of  which  the  art  had  been  taught  her  in  childhood 
by  the  nuns,  sent  it  to  a  merchant  of  the  north,  and 
received  its  price.  Twice  a  year  she  drew  her  slender 
income  from  the  bank,  went  into  the  city,  and  bought 
for  herself  a  black  or  a  white  gown.  That  was  all. 
The  rest  of  her  time  was  passed  in  attending  to  house- 
hold matters,  and  in  study ;  grave  studies  in  the 
learned  volumes,  chiefly  Greek  and  Latin,  by  which 
the  house  was  filled;  for  the  library  of  Illyris  had 
been  saved  by  a  friend  when  he  had  been  first  im- 
prisoned and  exiled  :  the  friend  was  dead,  but  the 
books  had  been  safely  carried  to  Aquilegia  when 
Illyris  had  first  arrived  there. 

Platon  Illyris  never  interfered  with  her.  He 
oftentimes  seemed  not  even  to  perceive  her  presence ; 


238  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

and  he  was  certainly  unconscious  of  all  he  owed  to 
her  for  the  cleanliness  and  comfort  which  sweetened 
his  latest  years.  At  other  times,  but  these  were 
rare,  he  spoke  to  her  of  his  far-away  past ;  and  then 
his  eyes  would  flash  and  darken,  and  his  voice  grow 
stronger,  and  the  fires  of  his  spirit  awaken,  and  the 
days  of  the  past  live  again  for  him. 

Ilia  had  no  knowledge  of  luxury  and  pleasure, 
and  had  no  need  of  that  to  which  she  was  a  stranger. 
When  she  could  see  the  sun  rise  and  set  above  the 
sea,  hear  the  nightingale's  song  in  the  myrtle  thickets, 
breathe  fresh,  pure  air,  study  the  great  thoughts  of 
the  mighty  dead,  and  watch  the  succession  of  the 
wild  flowers,  she  was  content. 

Illyris  had  possessed  a  profound  knowledge  of  his 
fellow-men.  No  weakness  or  fault  of  theirs  had 
ever  escaped  him.  He  had  used  them,  and  cast 
them  aside  as  he  did  a  notched  sword.  But  of 
women  he  had  never  had  any  knowledge.  He  had 
the  oriental  view  of  them  —  that  they  were  made  to 
amuse,  and  to  conceive,  and  to  nourish ;  nothing 
else ;  which  is  indeed  the  view  taken  by  Nature 
herself.  He  did  not  therefore  perceive  that  Ilia  was 
of  a  finer  mould,  a  firmer  texture,  than  her  sex  in 
general.  But  she  pleased  his  taste ;  he  liked  to  see 
that  one  of  his  own  blood  was  living  in  the  fulness 
of  youth  and  of  beauty ;  her  step  was  soft,  her 
movements  were  noiseless,  her  voice  was  melodious 
and  low,  her  face  and  form  were  those  of  the  female 
divinities  once  worshipped  in  Helianthus,  whose 
lineaments  were  still  seen  in  many  a  mask  and  bust 
turned  up  in  the  soil  of  the  woods  of  Mount  Atys 
by  charcoal-burners  and  mushroom-seekers. 

The  veins  of  Illyris   had  been  chilled   by  deep 


xiir  HELIANTHUS  239 

wrongs  and  long  solitude,  and  affections  were  far 
away  from  him  —  as  far  away  as  the  days  of  his 
great  battles ;  yet  he  was  glad  to  see  Ilia  beneath 
his  roof,  to  know  that  she  belonged  to  him.  He 
was  not  unkind,  but  he  was  not  kind ;  he  thought 
little  about  her ;  sometimes  he  was  interested  in  her 
studies  of  the  ancient  literature  of  Helianthus,  and 
gave  her  the  aid  of  his  own  great  knowledge.  But 
at  other  times  he  would  tell  her  rudely  that  women 
should  not  occupy  themselves  with  learning.  She 
never  contradicted  him ;  she  waited  patiently  until 
a  gentler  mood  had  come  to  him,  and  he  was  again 
disposed  to  assist  her  philological  or  historical  studies. 

But  she  was  happier  thus  than  she  would  have 
been  in  the  noise  and  turmoil  of  any  of  the  cities  of 
men.  Her  temperament  was  that  of  the  recluse ; 
the  stir  and  struggle,  the  sights  and  sounds  of  the 
world  were  distressing  and  odious  to  her ;  even  the 
old,  still,  darksome  cities  of  her  mother's  land  were 
too  populous  for  her ;  their  chimes  too  noisy,  and 
their  roofs  too  close  ;  their  air  too  full  of  voices,  and 
their  hearths  too  near  each  other.  She  wanted  vast 
solitudes,  great  silences,  deep  shade,  wide  waters  ; 
the  vicinity  of  crowds  hurt  her  like  the  touch  of 
caustic ;  she  had  the  soul  in  her  of  her  people  of  an 
earlier  time  who  had  dwelt  in  lonely  temples  and 
served  the  altars  of  forest  gods. 

To  Ilia,  departure  from  Aquilegia  would  have 
been  like  the  exile  from  Acadia  to  Evangeline,  like 
the  banishment  to  Danubian  darkness  to  Ovid.  She 
had  nothing  in  her  of  the  modern  temper  —  nothing 
of  its  restlessness,  its  feverish  discontent,  its  appetite 
for  tumult  and  for  change;  she  asked  of  life  only 
repose,  isolation,  and  the  near  presence  of  wild 


24o  HELIANTHUS  CHAP,  xm 

nature ;  she  could  live  on  the  scantiest  and  plainest 
food,  but  she  could  not  exist  in  an  air  breathed 
by  drunken  crowds.  The  solitude,  the  silence,  the 
sanctity  and  majesty  of  these  everlasting  hills  were 
dear  to  her ;  the  calmness,  the  stillness,  the  deep 
shadows,  the  clear  lights,  the  sunsets  beyond  the 
distant  sea,  the  silvery  foliage  overhanging  the 
marble  walls,  the  sense  of  nearness  to  a  great  past 
from  which  she  herself  had  sprung,  to  a  race  which, 
seons  earlier,  had  been  her  race,  whose  glories  were 
imperishable  in  human  memory  so  long  as  human 
lives  endured,  —  all  these  rendered  her  home  in  the 
olive  groves  of  these  classic  hills  dear  to  her  as  no 
other  spot  on  earth  could  ever  be.  Her  love  for  it 
was  the  strongest  love  she  ever  yet  had  known. 


CHAPTER   XIV 

THE  visit  of  Othyris  to  Aquilegia  was  soon  repeated, 
and  little  by  little  Illyris  almost  ceased  to  remember 
that  his  disciple  was  a  Gunderode,  the  great-grandson 
of  Theodoric.  He  only  saw  in  him  a  young  man  of 
extreme  intelligence,  of  high  culture,  and  of  original 
opinions  ;  one  also  who  had  as  much  humility  as 
capacity.  He  forgot  that  this  scholar  might  one  day 
reign ;  or  if  he  did  remember  it,  he  only  strove  the 
more  to  strengthen  in  him  all  the  views  and  prin- 
ciples which  made  Othyris  averse  to  all  that  other 
men  of  his  rank  considered  to  be  their  religion  and 
their  right. 

*  What  would  you  have  him  do  if  ever  he  be 
called  to  the  throne  ? '  Ilia  asked  timidly  one  day 
after  the  departure  of  Othyris. 

f  Refuse  it,'  said  Platon  Illyris. 

c  Would  that  remove  his  responsibility  ? '  she  said, 
apprehensive  of  appearing  rash  and  rude.  *  If  we 
drop  a  burden  do  we  not  still  remain  bound  to 
account  for  it  ? ' 

Illyris  was  silent  a  little  while. 

s  You  think  for  yourself.     That  is  well.     I  admit 

that  it  is  well.     You  are  bold.     You  are  an  Illyris/ 

he    said.      f  When    there    are    two    evils     betwixt 

which   a    man    must    choose,  he    can  but  take  the 

R  241 


242  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

lesser.     He  is  not  a  god  to  change  the  face  of  the 
world.' 

*  But,  as  king,  could  he  not  do  some  good  ? ' 
Platon  Illyris  smiled  grimly. 

f  The  strongest  swimmer  in  a  stream  stronger 
than  himself  is  swept  away  on  it.  There  is  a  putrid 
and  pestiferous  current  always  circling  round  every 
throne  of  which  no  occupant  of  it  can  escape  the 
miasma.  Carolus  Magnus  himself,  were  he  reign- 
ing to-day,  could  not  resist  the  sycophant,  the 
politician,  the  financier,  the  pressure  of  the  Press.' 

'  Might  the  Duke  of  Othyris  not  create  a  republic 
and  lead  it  ? ' 

*  He  might  perhaps  if  occasion  served ;  but  that 
would  be  to  turn  traitor  to  his  own  race.     A  man  of 
honour  could  not  do  that.     Noblesse  oblige;  and  it 
is   an    inexorable    obligation   with  loyal   characters. 
His  is  loyal.     He  is  not  strong,  but  he  is  sincere.' 

1  Then  what  future  will  he  have  ? ' 

f  Who  can  say  ?  I  doubt  me  he  will  end  ill. 
Men  do  not  love  an  honest  man,  whether  prince  or 
peasant.  But  get  you  to  your  household  work, 
child.  These  questions  are  not  for  women.' 

He  regarded  her  as  veterans  two  thousand  years 
before  in  Helianthus  had  regarded  their  females. 
He  looked  after  her  as  without  protest  she  silently 
left  his  chamber.  For  the  first  time  her  beauty, 
her  grace,  her  dignity  were  apparent  to  him  ;  for  the 
first  time  he  perceived  that  she  was  no  mere  spinner 
at  the  distaff,  or  housewife  in  a  dwelling-place. 
She  was  an  Illyris ;  she  was  not  as  other  women 
were. 

Did  she  dream  dreams  of  a  future  in  which  this 
young  man  and  she  might  have  a  mutual  part? 


xiv  HELIANTHUS  243 

Did  she  see  in  herself  a  purer  Eudocia,  a  more  un- 
selfish Irene,  a  Joan  of  Arc  victorious  and  beloved  ? 

Who  could  tell  the  thoughts  of  a  mind  divided 
at  once  by  virginal  unconsciousness  of  its  own  in- 
stincts and  by  the  force  inherited  from  a  martial 
race  ?  Memories  of  the  springtime  of  human  life,  of 
the  awakening  of  the  soul  and  the  senses,  were  far 
away  from  Illyris,  so  far,  so  very  far,  and  covered 
with  the  fallen  leaves  of  so  many  passionless  and 
joyless  years,  yet  they  arose  in  his  mind  now. 

1  I  am  no  fit  guardian  of  youth,  of  a  maiden's 
youth,'  he  thought.  *  I  am  so  old,  so  old !  An 
aged  hound,  toothless,  and  chained,  and  feared  by 
none,  although  once  he  kept  all  at  bay.' 

And  the  heart  of  the  hero  of  Argileion  and 
Samaris  was  as  a  stone  heavy  in  his  breast. 

Seeing  that  he  was  in  sorrow  Ajax  came  to  him, 
and  laid  his  head  on  the  knees  of  his  master  and 
friend. 

c  Ajax,'  said  Illyris,  as  he  laid  his  hand  on  the 
dog's  head,  (  ask  not  of  the  gods  to  live  long,  my 
friend.  Age  is  but  an  unkinder  death  ;  conscious  of 
itself  and  powerless  to  rise.  Readers  of  history 
weep  for  Germanicus,  for  Marcellus,  for  John  of 
Austria,  for  Gaston  de  Foix  —  Oh  fools  !  Thrice 
happy  were  those  youths  ! ' 

c  Elim  of  Gunderode  is  a  theorist,  an  idealist,'  he 
would  say  to  Ilia.  ( It  is  not  with  theories,  nor 
with  ideals,  that  men  are  governed.  It  is  by  the 
sword,  by  the  fist ;  by  the  force  of  the  brain,  not  by 
its  fancies.  His  mind  is  rich  in  imagination,  but  it 
is  poor  in  will-power.  To  act  strongly  he  must  be 
strongly  excited  ;  when  the  excitement  passes  his 


244  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

will  drops  like  a  burnt-out  match.  It  is  volition 
rather  than  intellect  which  makes  the  man  who  rules 
others  succeed  in  being  accepted  and  obeyed  by 
them.  This  young  prince  does  not  believe  in  his 
own  powers ;  therefore  men  will  never  long  believe 
in  him.  He  is  full  of  doubts  and  scruples  ;  how 
should  he  enforce  his  will  upon  others  ?  He  has  no 
will !  He  is  too  undecided  to  govern  men.  Inde- 
cision is  an  intellectual  defect ;  it  accompanies  acute 
perception,  it  belongs  to  philosophic  doubt,  but  it 
paralyses  action.  The  student  may  be  undecided, 
indeed  should  be,  for  he  sees  all  the  facts  of  a  ques- 
tion, and  is  not  called  on  to  turn  theory  into  fact ; 
but  the  leader  of  men  must  know  what  he  wishes, 
what  he  intends,  what  he  rules,  and  must  never 
waver  in  his  determination  and  his  choice.' 

*  Tell  me,  sir,  what  ought  I  to  do  in  the  years 
to  come,  should  I  live  to  see  them  ? '  Othyris  had 
said  to  him  one  day. 

f  I  am  too  old  to  counsel  youth,'  answered  Illyris. 
£  The  world  of  to-day  is  not  mine  ;  it  is  yours.  All 
that  the  men  of  my  time  held  sacred  seems  foolish- 
ness to  those  of  yours.  I  cannot  judge  for  your 
generation.  I  am  out  of  its  orbit.  Can  the  dark  and 
dreary  Saturn  judge  of  the  green  and  sunlit  earth  ? ' 

'  In  truth,  sir,  has  humanity  altered  much  since 
the  days  of  Plato  or  Pericles  ? ' 

£  I  know  not.  It  has  altered  much  since  mine. 
I  am  old,  very  old  ;  I  cannot  judge  for  a  young  man. 
Your  position  is  difficult,  and  may  become  more  so ; 
but  I  should  not  dare  to  say  what  road  you  should 
take  out  of  it,  or  even  if  you  should  attempt  to  get 
out  of  it.' 


xiv  HELIANTHUS  245 

4  Would  you  counsel  me  ? '  said  Othyris ;  he 
looked  at  Ilia. 

She  answered  :  — 

4  No.  I  do  not  even  know  my  own  generation. 
How  can  I  judge  anything  for  any  one  else  ? ' 

£  But  were  you  myself,  what  would  you  do  ? ' 

She  hesitated.  She  knew  what  she  would  do ; 
she  would  surrender  all  things  to  be  free.  She 
looked  at  Illyris. 

f  When  you,  sir,  made  your  choice  of  life,  did  you 
doubt  long  ?  Or  did  you  see  your  path  clearly  and 
at  once  ? ' 

*  The  stranger  ruled  in  my  land,'  replied  Illyris. 
{  It  was  easy  in  my  day  to  see  where  duty  pointed 
and  honour  and  manhood  led.     There  is  no  joy  so 
great  as  a  clear,  straight  road.     This  young  lord's 
road  is  neither.     Do  what  he  will,  he  will  repent.' 

Othyris  smiled  sorrowfully. 

'  In  doubt  do  nothing  ;  so  a  statesman  said.  That 
is  probably  how  my  life  will  drift  away ;  in  doing 
nothing,  changing  nothing,  desiring  vaguely  and 
uselessly,  and  aimlessly  regretting.' 

The  still  clear  eyes  of  the  nonagenarian  looked  at 
him  with  some  compassion. 

c  Enjoy  your  youth,'  he  said.  f  Let  men  alone. 
They  will  not  thank  you  if  you  suffer  for  them,  nor 
are  they  worth  it.' 

1 1  cannot  enjoy,'  said  Othyris  with  a  certain 
passion  in  his  voice,  f  and  I  have  no  youth,  because 
I  have  never  been  free.  I  am  like  the  planets  ;  I 
cannot  escape  from  my  atmosphere  and  its  pressure.' 

*  Young  man,'  said  Illyris,  c  we  in  my  days  were 
not  theorists  ;  we  acted.     We  followed  our  instincts  ; 
we  did  not  analyse  them.     True,  it  was  the  day  of 


246  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

great  poets.  But  they  were  few,  they  must  always 
be  few ;  the  rest  of  us  lived  our  odes,  we  did  not 
write  them.' 

c  You  carved  them  on  granite  with  your  swords.' 
f  Eh  !  Who  reads  what  we  wrote  ?  History,  you 
will  say.  But  will  the  future  care  for  history  ?  The 
world  cares  but  little  now.  A  man's  lifetime  of 
study  is  pressed  into  a  dozen  volumes.  The  vol- 
umes stand  on  shelves  and  librarians  dust  them. 
That  is  all.' 

*  Sir,    I    want    sympathy    and    you    give    me    a 
stone.' 

'  To  want  sympathy  is  in  itself  a  sign  of  weakness. 
Learn  to  stand  alone,'  said  Illyris  with  some  scorn  ; 
he  had  been  a  very  strong  man,  needing  neither 
counsellor  nor  comfort. 

Ilia  made  a  murmur  of  dissent  and  of  deprecation. 

f  We  cannot  give  you  bread,  sir,'  she  said  to 
Elim,  c  because  you  must  eat  at  other  and  higher 
tables  than  ours.' 

*  Let  me   take  the  humblest  place  at  yours,'  he 
murmured. 

*  No,'  said  Platon  Illyris,  and  he  struck  his  hands 
on  the  arms  of  his  great  chair.     f  You  are  a  good 
youth,  I  think,    but    you    are    who  you  are.      No 
Gunderode  breaks    bread  with  an  Illyris,  either  in 
fact  or  in  metaphor.     Get  you  hence.' 

s  Go,'  said  Ilia  gently  but  with  firmness. 

Elim  rose,  bowed  low  and  went.  He  had  been 
given  the  wholesome  bread  which  he  never  tasted 
anywhere  but  here  :  plain  truth.  It  was  bitter,  yet 
welcome  to  a  cloyed  palate.  Nowhere  else  in  the 
whole  crowded  world  would  he  have  been  thus  dis- 
missed ;  nowhere  else  would  homage,  respect,  and 


xiv  HELIANTHUS  247 

welcome  have  been  refused  him.  He  went  out  under 
the  silvery  shadows  of  the  giant  olives  where  the 
cushats  were  cooing  and  the  blackcaps  were  singing. 
Deep  rest  and  fragrant  silence  lay  like  a  benedic- 
tion on  the  whole  hillside.  The  only  unrest  there, 
was  in  his  own  soul. 

Ilia  and  Illyris  ate  of  the  meal  which  Mai'a  had 
prepared ;  it  was  frugal  but  well-cooked ;  the  linen 
was  homespun  but  lavender-scented,  the  table  had  in 
its  centre  an  old  pottery  dish  filled  with  flowers.  Ilia 
would  have  been  quite  willing  that  Othyris  should 
have  broken  bread  with  them  there,  for  false  shame, 
born  of  the  false  standards  of  the  world,  had  never 
touched  her.  She  would  have  given  him  the  best  she 
had  willingly,  but  she  would  not  have  been  troubled 
by  any  fear  lest  that  best  should  seem  meagre  to  him. 

When  their  repast  was  ended  Illyris  went  back  to 
his  book-room  and  seated  himself  again  in  his  great 
black  chair;  the  window  was  open,  early  roses  nodded 
between  the  iron  grating,  the  pure  mountain  air  blew 
through  the  room,  birds  sang  in  the  myrtle  bushes 
and  in  the  fresh  early  leafage  of  the  poplar  trees. 

Ilia  brought  him  his  Eastern  water-pipe. 

'Sir,'  she  said  with  hesitation,  'why  are  you  so  stern 
to  the  King's  son  ?  He  has  a  great  reverence  for  you, 
and  surely  he  is  not  guilty  of  the  sins  of  his  race.' 

f  Perhaps  not,'  answered  Illyris,  '  but  he  cannot 
wash  their  blood  out  of  his  veins,  —  nor  that  of  the 
tyrant  of  the  North.  He  is  sincere,  I  believe,'  he 
added,  c  but  he  has  nothing  to  do  with  us.  He  must 
go  whither  his  birth  calls  him.  Between  him  and  us 
there  can  be  no  amity.' 

1  Might  he  not  one  day  realise  your  own  dreams 
for  Helianthus  ? ' 


248  HELIANTHUS  CHAP,  xiv 

Illyris  laughed  bitterly,  with  the  bitterness  of  one 
who  jests  at  his  own  expense. 

*  Child,  my  dreams  were  fair  and  fond,  but  they 
were  illusions.    I  did  not  reckon  with  the  meanness  of 
men,  with  the  sordidness  of  their  ambitions,  with  the 
dwarfing  and  deadening  of  modern  feeling,  with  the 
corruption  which  putrefies  all  public  life.     Fool  that 
I  was !  —  I  dreamt  of  an  ideal  State,  and  I  drenched 
my  mother-earth  with  blood,  for  what  ?     For  what  ? 
That  her  sons  might  sink  under  a  weight  of  arms,  and 
her  children  sicken  and  die  for  want  of  bread !    God 
forgive  me  my  blindness!    Fool,  oh  fool  that  I  was!' 

£  But  you  drove  out  the  foreigner  ? ' 

*  Ay  !  —  and  the  Gunderode  and  their  tax-officers 
and  their  drill-sergeants  reign  in   his  place  !    What 
good  have  I  done  to  the  people  ?     I  have  not  even 
given  them  liberty.     If  they  forget  that  I  ever  lived, 
have  I  the  right  to  blame  them.' 

His  head  sank  on  his  breast,  and  a  great  sigh  es- 
caped him.  He  had  driven  out  the  stranger — yes, 
—  but  was  Helianthus  happier  or  freer  ?  Was  not 
her  liberty  a  myth  ?  Was  she  not  fed  on  steel,  and 
the  scanty  cones  of  the  maize  ?  Did  not  the  children 
come  to  the  birth  only  to  toil  as  soon  as  they  could 
crawl  ?  The  foreign  sentinel  was  no  more  at  tne 
gates,  but  the  foreign  usurer  was  within  them.  What 
had  been  gained  ?  His  victories  had  been  great ;  his 
country  had  been  to  him  as  a  fair  woman,  bound  a 
slave  in  a  mart,  and  set  free  by  his  sword.  But  what 
was  she  now  ?  Prostituted  to  the  Jew,  or  famished 
in  the  alien's  factories,  or  starved  and  sunburnt  in 
the  mortgaged  fields  !  His  long  life,  his  endless  sac- 
rifices, were  as  naught. 


CHAPTER   XV 

THE  funeral  of  Domitian  Corvus  was  passing 
through  Helios ;  a  funeral  provided  at  the  cost  of 
the  State,  imposing,  long,  stately,  with  troops  keep- 
ing the  streets,  and  crowds  driven  back  by  carabineers, 
women  fainting,  children  crushed,  barriers  breaking, 
clubs  crowded,  flags  at  half-mast,  —  no  accompani- 
ment or  attribute  of  dignity  being  wanting.  It  was 
really  a  pity  that  Corvus  had  not  eyes  to  see  it  from 
his  bier,  for  it  would  have  rejoiced  his  arrogant  and 
self-admiring  soul,  and  have  assured  him  that  he  had 
been  really  that  ancient  Roman  whom  in  life  he  had 
delighted  to  be  called. 

The  golden  tassels  of  the  pall  were  held  by  eight 
Ministers  of  the  Crown  of  past  and  present  admin- 
istrations, several  of  whom  had  at  times  been  his 
enemies;  and  heartily  as  they  had  often  cursed  him, 
they  had  never  done  so  with  more  intensity  than 
they  now  cursed  him  under  their  breath,  as  they,  all 
men  past  middle  age,  plodded  under  the  burning  sun, 
on  the  heated  granite  of  the  paven  streets,  up  to  the 
Cathedral  of  St.  Athanasius,  where  Corvus,  who  had 
been  an  avowed  freethinker  all  his  life,  was  most  ap- 
propriately to  be  interred  with  all  the  grandest  cere- 
monial of  the  Church. 

Corvus  had  been  many  things  in  his  day,  and  his 
day  had  been  long,  for  he  was  eighty-nine  years  of 

249 


HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

age  when  he  died.  He  had  been  a  red-hot  revolu- 
tionist, a  conspirator  against  all  powers  and  authori- 
ties, an  exile  without  bread  or  tobacco,  a  refugee  in 
foreign  garrets  and  wine-houses,  a  hidden  and  hunted 
man  in  the  cellars  of  Helios,  until,  on  the  death  of 
King  Theodoric,  a  general  amnesty  for  political  of- 
fenders having  been  proclaimed,  Illyris  alone  ex- 
cluded, he  returned  to  his  native  country,  found 
work  as  a  lawyer,  got  himself  elected  deputy,  took 
the  oath  of  allegiance  to  the  Gunderode,  and  sat  for 
many  long  sessions  as  an  extreme  Radical.  He 
made  himself  feared  both  in  the  Chambers  and  out- 
side them  ;  he  had  led  a  turbulent,  violent,  scandalous 
life,  but  he  rose  step  by  step,  and  began  to  loom 
large  before  the  eyes  of  men ;  he  had  no  single 
scruple  of  any  sort  to  drag  him  backward  ;  he  pos- 
sessed a  domineering,  overbearing,  insolent  temper, 
which  struck  like  an  iron  mace  upon  the  fears  of  his 
fellow-men  ;  he  used  this  mace  without  mercy  ;  he 
was  sunk  to  his  throat  in  scandals  of  every  sort,  but 
he  came  out  of  them,  as  out  of  a  mud-bath,  only  the 
stronger.  He  was  covered  with  filth  from  head  to 
foot ;  but  he  shook  it  off  into  the  gutter,  threw  it  in 
his  enemies'  eyes,  and  passed  on  victorious.  From  a 
revolutionary  deputy  he  became  a  radical  Minister, 
and,  once  a  Minister,  he  slipped  his  skin  as  easily  as 
snakes  slip  theirs  in  springtime,  and  became  a  reac- 
tionist of  the  first  water  ;  and  when  disturbances  oc- 
curred during  his  premiership  he  used  the  mitrailleuse 
and  the  musketry  volley  with  as  much  firmness  and 
ferocity  as  though  he  had  been  all  his  life  an  abso- 
lutist. He  obtained  all  the  highest  decorations  of 
Europe,  hobnobbed  with  emperors,  and  was  regarded 
by  a  large  party  as  the  saviour  of  Helianthus  ;  that 


xv  HELIANTHUS  251 

he  had  plunged  her  into  disastrous  wars,  seduced  her 
with  injurious  ambitions,  led  her  blindfold  to  the 
brink  of  bankruptcy,  filled  her  prisons  with  her 
young  men,  and  cultivated  corruption  upon  her  soil 
as  a  plant  whose  rank  poison  was  the  most  fragrant 
of  perfumes,  —  these  things  mattered  not  at  all  to 
his  apostles  and  his  adorers.  He  was  the  great  Cor- 
vus,  and  when  a  strong  wave  of  national  indignation 
had  at  last  swept  him  away  into  private  life,  his  par- 
tisans had  rabidly  defended  his  name,  and  his  south- 
ern retreat  had  become  a  place  of  pilgrimage  for  the 
faithful.  And  now  he  was  being  buried  with  all  the 
honours  of  the  State. 

King  John  in  council  with  his  Ministers  had  de- 
cided that  the  State  could  do  no  less  for  the  remains 
of  this  its  most  faithful  servant.  King  John  had 
always  admired  him,  and  had  supported  him,  often  to 
the  injury  of  the  Crown  and  country. 

Domitian  Corvus  had  been  the  only  Minister  of 
strength  and  will  who  had  been  ever  wholly  accept- 
able to  the  King.  In  this  old  man  the  King  had 
recognised  a  craft  so  cunning,  a  force  so  pitiless,  a 
brain  so  utterly  unscrupulous,  that  he  could  not  but 
admire  them  ;  and  found  his  master  in  the  science  of 
human  nature.  When  the  scandals  due  to  financial 
speculation,  corruption,  and  dishonesty  became  so 
discreditable  to  Corvus  and  his  family,  and  so 
flagrant  that  they  could  no  longer  be  concealed,  and 
when  even  the  very  elastic  moralities  of  the  Helian- 
thine  nation  would  endure  him  no  more  in  power, 
his  fall  had  been  sincerely  mourned  by  his  royal 
master.  True,  Corvus  had  been  very  old  when  he 
had  at  last  been  driven  into  private  life  ;  but  age  had 
never  diminished  his  infinite  resources,  his  relentless 


252  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

cruelty,  or  his  consummate  cunning.  There  was  not 
his  equal  in  the  ranks  of  those  politicians  from  whom 
the  Crown  had  to  select  its  public  servants.  Person- 
ally, the  King  did  not  attach  any  great  blame  to 
corruption.  History  was  full  of  it.  Even  Scipio 
Africanus  did  not  escape  its  reproach. 

The  strongest  man  is  a  weak  one  without  money ; 
naturally  a  strong  man  uses  his  strength  to  get  money 
where  and  how  he  can.  The  King  was  rather  dis- 
posed to  blame  Corvus  for  not  having  taken  more  ; 
for  not  having  enriched  himself  so  that  there  could 
not  have  been  room  in  his  career  for  debts,  and 
seizures,  and  similar  blotches  and  blemishes,  which 
are  really  only  excusable  in  feeble  men.  It  should 
surely  be  only  simpletons  who  let  their  bills  be  pro- 
tested, their  womenkind  be  sued  by  tradespeople, 
their  artistic  collections  sold  at  auction.  When 
Corvus  had  excused  himself  for  having  neglected 
his  own  affairs  because  he  had  been  so  absorbed  in 
the  affairs  of  the  nation,  the  excuse  seemed  to  the 
monarch  the  only  puerile  speech  he  had  ever  heard 
from  his  great  Minister. 

The  public  in  a  measure  held  the  same  opinion  as 
the  King,  and  considered  his  errors  of  venality  to  be 
pardonable  in  Corvus,  even  as  history  regards  those 
of  Verulam. 

Although  Corvus  had  disappeared  from  public  life 
under  a  quagmire  of  scandal,  there  had  always  been 
the  possibility  of  his  resurrection  even  at  eighty  odd 
years  of  age.  At  his  death,  therefore,  all  the  other 
Ministers,  both  in  and  out  of  office,  felt  unspeakably 
relieved  that  the  old  rogue  was  nailed  down  in  a 
triple  coffin,  and  would  be  buried  under  a  weight  of 
marble,  never  more  to  reappear.  Meantime  they  all 


xv  HELIANTHUS  253 

wore  black,  looked  sad  and  inconsolable,  and  spoke 
with  reverence  of  this  dear  colleague  of  their  man- 
hood, the  honoured  master  of  their  youth.  There- 
fore, of  course,  they  had  been  obliged  to  be  the  first 
to  consider  a  public  funeral  a  fitting  homage  to  the 
great  departed. 

'  The  damned  old  brute,'  thought  Kantakuzene, 
'  he  was  the  strongest  of  us  all.  He  never  had  a 
qualm.  He  never  had  a  scruple.  He  struck  hard 
—  and  he  never  missed.  He  minded  exposure  no 
more  than  a  model  minds  it  in  the  studio.  He  cared 
no  more  when  the  nation  cursed  him  than  Richelieu 
cared  when  the  people  cursed  the  Robe  Rouge.  He 
was  strong,  amazingly  strong.' 

Kantakuzene,  as  he  toiled  under  the  weight  of  the 
coffin,  sighed,  for  he  himself  was  not  very  strong; 
he  was  only  exceedingly  subtle  and  shrewd,  talented, 
eloquent,  and  adroit. 

He  had  indeed  that  kind  of  strength  which  con- 
sists in  knowing  where  one's  own  weakness  lies,  and 
also  he  had  no  superior  in  the  useful  talent  of  making 
black  look  white,  and  a  mere  expediency  appear  a 
patriotic  ability ;  but  the  merciless  strength  which 
had  made  Corvus  hesitate  at  no  enormity,  no  be- 
trayal, no  change  of  front,  and  no  acceptance  of 
iniquity  —  this  he  had  not,  and  therefore  he  knew 
that  he  would  never  equal  Corvus  in  the  estimate  of 
other  men. 

The  clang  of  the  brazen  kettle-drum  echoes 
farther,  and  its  sound  lasts  longer,  than  the  melody 
of  the  flute. 

Othyris  was  moved  to  a  hot  indignation  and  an 
acute  sense  of  shame  for  his  nation  and  his  family  as 
he  heard  the  fine  bands  of  the  King's  Foot  Guards 


254  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

playing  the  Dead  March  from  Saut,  which  came  to 
his  ear  from  the  distance  as  he  went  up  the  steep 
road  outside  the  Gate  of  Olives  on  his  way  to 
Aquilegia. 

'They  shall  know  there  that  I  have  no  share  in 
the  glorification  of  a  scoundrel,'  he  thought. 

From  the  time  of  his  early  boyhood,  when  he  had 
put  his  hands  behind  his  back  one  day  at  the  Soleia 
.to  avoid  touching  the  hand  of  Corvus,  who  was  then 
a  Minister  of  the  Crown,  he  had  abhorred  the  con- 
duct, public  or  private,  of  that  politician. 

The  man  had  begun  life  a  red-hot  revolutionary, 
and  had  passed  the  last  thirty  years  of  his  existence  as 
an  absolutist.  He  had  abjured  in  age  every  principle 
which  he  had  held  in  youth.  He  had  in  later  years 
filled  the  prisons  of  Helianthus  with  young  men  who 
had  merely  held  the  same  political  creed  as  he  had 
himself  professed  at  the  same  age  as  theirs.  He  had 
played  Judas  to  his  country's  Christ.  When  war  had 
served  the  purpose  of  his  Cabinet  he  had  sent  tens 
of  thousands  of  lads  to  the  shambles  for  no  gain,  no 
reason,  no  purpose,  except  that  it  was  in  the  interests 
of  his  own  retention  of  office  to  do  so.  His  old  age, 
cruel,  venal,  crafty,  shameless,  strong,  had  gone  down 
in  dishonour  and  dishonesty;  yet  he  was  being  borne 
to  his  last  home  with  pomp  and  with  applause  !  Too 
many  men  had  feared  him,  too  many  had  been  com- 
promised by  him,  too  many  now  felt  uneasy  that 
their  letters  and  their  signatures  were  locked  up  in 
those  boxes  which  would  henceforth  be  the  property 
either  of  his  heirs  or  of  the  Government,  for  any  one 
of  influence  in  Helianthus  to  oppose  the  deference 
paid  to  his  remains. 

The   world    thinks    the  woman's    prostitution  of 


xv  HELIANTHUS  255 

beauty  a  greater  sin  than  the  man's  prostitution  of 
intellect,  but  it  is  not  so.  Of  the  two,  the  prostitu- 
tion of  the  mind  is  more  far-reaching,  more  profound, 
and  more  evil  in  its  effects  on  others,  than  the  sale  of 
mere  physical  charms  :  the  woman  sells  herself  alone, 
the  man  often  sells  his  generation,  his  country,  and 
his  disciples,  with  himself.  History  redresses  the 
false  balance,  —  so  it  is  said.  But  how  can  we  be 
sure  of  that  which  we  shall  not  see  ?  For  it  is  not 
contemporary  history  which  dares  to  tell  the  truth. 

From  the  path  on  the  hillside  leading  to  Aqui- 
legia,  Othyris  saw  in  the  distance  the  long  line  of  the 
funeral  procession  passing  along  one  of  the  great 
marble  quays  towards  the  Cathedral :  afar  off  it 
looked  as  small  as  a  regiment  of  ants.  He  paused 
a  moment,  and  thought :  — 

{ Illyris  in  obscurity  and  poverty ;  Corvus  in 
pomp  and  fame  !  How  little  is  the  land  worthy  of 
her  freedom  !  She  forgets  the  hero,  and  admires  the 
knave !  How  little  are  nations  worthy  of  service 
and  of  sacrifice  !  They  feed  the  wolf  off  silver,  and 
leave  the  watch-dogs  famished  on  the  stones.' 

With  a  sadder  heart  he  took  his  way  upward  to 
the  lowly  home  of  the  victor  of  Argileion  and 
Samaris,  leaving  the  celebration  of  the  triumph  of 
Corvus  behind  him  in  the  city  which  had  forgotten 
Illyris. 

Illyris  had  grown  used  to  his  occasional  visits  ; 
and  if  he  did  not  welcome,  did  not  reject  them. 
Their  discourse  was  usually  on  impersonal  subjects, 
themes  which  were  of  equal  interest  to  them  both  as 
scholars  and  philologists,  students  of  history  and  of 
mankind :  he  who  had  made  so  large  a  portion  of 
the  past  history  of  Helianthus,  and  he  by  whom  the 


256  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

future  history  of  Helianthus  might  be  made,  met  on 
the  neutral  ground  of  mutual  love  for  the  country, 
for  its  language,  its  traditions,  its  people. 

f  He  is  a  hybrid,'  said  Illyris  once  in  his  absence; 
'more  Guthonic  than  aught  else;  but,  as  far  as  his 
looks  and  his  mind  go,  he  might  be  a  pure-bred 
Helianthine.' 

Illyris  could  give  no  higher  praise. 

This  day  Illyris  sat  erect  in  his  great  chair  of 
ebony  and  black  leather ;  his  eyes  were  wide  open 
and  ablaze  with  light,  a  scornful  wrath  was  on  his 
features ;  and  his  hands  struck  with  rage  a  folio 
volume  of  which  the  yellow  ribbed  pages  were  opened 
on  his  knee. 

f  Corvus  !  —  buried  by  the  State  ! '  he  cried,  his 
white  beard  trembling  with  his  wrath  and  his  disdain  ; 
and  he  laughed  long  and  loud,  a  terrible  ironical 
laughter,  scorching  as  caustic. 

Othyris  was  silent :  Illyris  sat  silent  also  for  a 
while,  his  white  beard  drooping  on  his  breast. 

f  Corvus  —  buried  by  the  State,'  he  muttered 
again. 

f  What  come  you  hither  for  ? '  he  cried,  as  he 
recognised  Othyris.  f  Why  are  you  not  behind  the 
bier  of  the  man  your  father  honoured  ? ' 

c  I  came  to  show  you,  sir,  that  I  have  nothing  to 
do  with  what  I  hold  to  be  a  national  disgrace.' 

{  Corvus  was  a  Minister  of  your  House.  Are 
none  of  your  princes  behind  his  corpse  ? ' 

f  1  know  not.     I  can  but  answer  for  myself.' 

c  You  are  a  Gunderode !  Corvus  was  your 
servant.' 

c  Not  mine.' 

'  Get  you   away  from    here.     Go    and  join    the 


xv  HELIANTHUS  257 

Ministers  of  the  Crown.  Go  and  pray  for  Corvus' 
soul.' 

He  laughed  cruelly,  terribly.  All  the  eloquence 
which  had  once  swayed  the  minds  of  the  multitudes 
as  a  wind  sways  the  sea  waves  had  returned  to  him 
for  a  moment.  Suddenly  he  paused. 

c  You  are  the  King's  son,'  he  said  abruptly.  c  Go, 
go,  and  tell  your  sire  how  Platon  Illyris  judges  the 
knave  he  has  delighted  to  honour.' 

Then  he  beat  his  fist  on  the  folio  volume  lying  open 
on  his  knees,  and  a  wave  of  ironical  disdainful  laughter 
passed  over  his  features,  illumining  their  apathy  as 
lightning  might  play  upon  a  corpse. 

c  Corvus  buried  by  the  State !  '  he  repeated  yet 
again,  and  a  deep  scornful  laughter  shook  his  white 
beard,  his  bowed  colossal  frame. 

( 1  remember  Corvus,'  he  said, c  as  a  youth.  There 
were  ten  years  between  him  and  me.  I  had  just 
raised  my  first  regiment  of  volunteers  on  my  own 
estates.  He  was  with  us  in  the  early  years.  But  he 
was  useless  as  a  soldier.  His  strength  was  in  his 
tongue.  Well,  truly  has  it  served  him,  that  brazen, 
lying,  boastful  tongue,  that  skilful,  crafty,  flattering, 
and  bullying  tongue  !  It  was  his  all,  but  he  won  the 
world  with  it.' 

'  Yes,  sir,'  said  Othyris,  c  and  the  insignia  of  the 
great  Orders  of  the  world  lie  on  his  coffin.  But 
history  will  not  honour  him  ;  and  it  will  honour 
you.' 

f  Who  knows  ?  '  muttered  Illyris.  '  Is  history  the 
redresser  of  contemporary  injustice,  as  we  like  to 
believe,  or  is  it  but  the  repeater  of  all  the  false  judg- 
ments of  that  past  which  it  often  ignorantly  chronicles 
and  criticises  ?  Who  can  tell  ?  Clio  is  a  great  Muse, 


258  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

but  I  fear  she  only  sees  through  a  smoked  lens.  It 
is  hard  to  learn  the  exact  truth  of  a  little  incident 
which  occurs  a  mile  from  our  door.  It  must  be 
harder  still  to  judge  with  any  accuracy  the  deeds  and 
the  men  of  ages  long  gone  by.  Probably,  if  they 
write  of  me  in  time  to  come,  they  will  say  that  I 
was  a  headstrong  fool,  and  Corvus  a  great  and  a  wise 
man.' 

c  They  will  say  that,  when  they  shall  also  say  that 
Caesar  was  a  fool  and  Croesus  a  hero.' 

'You  flatter  me,  young  man.  You  give  me 
honey  to  eat  because  I  am  in  my  second  childhood.' 

'  No,  sir,  my  reverence  for  you  is  sincere.  I 
should  not  have  crossed  your  threshold  were  it  not 
so.' 

f  Well,  well,  I  believe  you,'  said  Illyris,  with  some 
emotion  ;  *  though  that  you  should  feel  this,  is  strange 
in  a  prince  of  the  House  of  Gunderode.' 

£  Here  I  am  not  a  prince  ;   I  am  a  neophyte.' 

c  You  have  a  pretty  turn  of  speech.  Almost  too 
pretty.  Honey  —  honey!' 

c  May  not  truth  be  sweet  sometimes,  sir  ?  Why 
should  it  always  be  bitter  ? ' 

Illyris  smiled  faintly. 

f  Heed  him  not,  child,'  he  muttered  to  Ilia.  *  He 
has  too  deft  a  tongue.' 

Then  the  old  man's  head  drooped.  He  was 
silent ;  his  eyes  closed ;  the  intermittent  strength  of 
his  extreme  age  gave  way  to  the  dreamy  stupor  of 
failing  powers  fatigued  by  momentary  excitement. 

1  It  was  so  hot,  so  hot,'  he  muttered  ;  '  it  was  the 
twentieth  day  of  June  ;  he  was  there  ;  he  had  volun- 
teered, but  he  did  not  fight.  He  never  fought  on 
any  field.  If  he  says  that  he  did,  he  lies.  My  right 


xv  HELIANTHUS  259 

line  was  breaking.  We  were  hard  pressed.  I  said 
to  him,  "  Ride  you  to  my  son  Gelon,  and  bid  him 
come  up  with  all  his  force,  or  the  day  may  be  lost." 
He  rode  away,  but  he  did  not  ride  to  Gelon.  He  said 
afterwards  that  he  mistook  the  road.  Gelon  did  not 
come.  It  was  like  Grouchy  at  Waterloo.  And  the 
sun  was  so  'hot,  so  hot !  Men  dropped  dead  :  un- 
wounded,  sunstricken.  Our  line  wavered  —  almost 
broke.  Then  I  cried  to  them  :  "  Rally,  my  children  ; 
rally.  Be  firm,  and  the  day  is  won  "  ;  and  they  gave 
a  great  cheer,  half  dead  though  they  were,  and 
they  followed  me,  and  the  sun  went  down,  down, 
down  ;  and  the  wheat  was  drenched  in  blood ;  and 
my  son  Constantine  lay  in  the  ripe  corn,  face  down- 
ward, shot  through  the  brain.  But  the  day  was  ours.' 

Then  again  he  was  mute,  and  the  light  died  out 
of  his  eyes,  and  the  stupor  of  senility  crept  back 
over  his  features. 

c  He  speaks  of  Argileion  ? '  said  Othyris,  under 
his  breath,  to  Ilia  Illyris. 

c  No,  of  Samaris.  It  was  at  Samaris  that  Con- 
stantine, my  grand-uncle,  was  killed.  Argileion  was 
fought  in  the  autumn  when  the  fields  were  bare  ; 
Samaris  when  the  wheat  was  ripe/ 

Othyris  was  silent.  These  great  combats  had  in 
their  ultimate  issue  placed  his  race  upon  the  throne 
of  Helianthus ;  and  the  hero  who  had  gained  these 
victories  at  such  vast  odds  was  left  here,  forgotten, 
unhonoured,  unaided,  allowed  only  on  sufferance  to 
end  his  last  years  on  his  native  soil ! 

Othyris  felt  as  though  he  stood  knee-deep  in  that 
sea  of  blood  which  had  dyed  red  the  amber  wheat 
of  fifty  summers  gone. 

*  It  is  terrible  ! '  he  muttered. 


26o  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

c  Yes,  it  is  terrible  ! '  said  Ilia  Illyris.  '  Terrible 
indeed  that  all  that  bloodshed,  all  that  heroism,  all 
those  glorious  hopes  and  dreams,  should  have  had  no 
other  result,  served  no  other  ultimate  end,  than  to 
crown  an  alien  race  on  the  Acropolis  of  Helios  ! ' 

Othyris  grew  red,  then  pale ;  stung  by  anger  and 
by  mortification.  What  other  living  creature  would 
have  dared  to  say  such  a  thing  as  this  in  his 
presence  ? 

But  had  he  not  said  it  to  himself  ? 

He  looked  at  her,  and  saw  that  she  was  perfectly 
serene  and  indifferent  to  any  effect  which  her  words 
might  have  on  him.  Her  head  was  slightly  bent ; 
her  eyelids  were  drooping  over  the  splendour  of  her 
eyes,  as  she  looked  down  at  the  lace  she  was  making ; 
her  hands  continued  their  delicate  evolutions. 

Suddenly  Illyris  raised  his  head;  his  brain  had 
cleared ;  the  passing  clouds  had  lifted. 

4 Who  followed?'  he  asked. 

Ilia  arose  and  approached  his  chair. 

f  Who  followed  what  ? '  she  asked  gently. 

*  Who  followed  the  coffin  of  Corvus  ?  Not  my 
veterans  ? ' 

She  was  silent ;  Othyris  also. 

(  Not  my  veterans  ? ' 

( There  are  few  living,  very  few,  sir,'  she  answered. 

1 1  know  —  Death  has  all  my  comrades  :  Death 
and  Age.  But  those  who  still  live  ?  —  they  were  not 
behind  that  traitor's  bier  ? ' 

She  was  silent. 

'Answer!'  said  Illyris,  striking  his  staff  with 
violence  upon  the  floor. 

c  The  few  who  still  live  were  there,  sir,  —  yes.' 

f  They  have  lived  too  long,  then  —  as  I  have  done! 


xv  HELIANTHUS  261 

My  men  behind  the  bier  of  Corvus !  Did  the 
Apostles  who  were  faithful  follow  the  rotten  corpse 
of  Judas  ? ' 

c  Perhaps,  sir,  they  thought  only  of  his  early 
life.  He  was  sincere  once,  was  he  not? ' 

'  Once !  Because  Iscariot  was  once  an  innocent 
child  at  his  mother's  breast  was  he  the  less  accursed  ? 
Maybe  Corvus  was  sincere  in  his  youth.  I  cannot 
answer  for  the  hidden  hearts  of  men.  But,  if  it  be 
so,  that  does  but  deepen  the  blackness  of  his  sin.  It 
is  but  a  reason  the  more  for  every  honest  man  to 
spit  in  scorn  upon  the  earth  of  his  grave.  He  took 
the  oath  of  allegiance  ;  he,  a  republican,  a  patriot, 
took  the  oath  of  allegiance  to  a  monarchy  ;  he  sat  in 
the  parliaments  of  a  monarchy ;  he  crawled  through 
crooked  ways  to  popularity  and  power  ;  he  wore  the 
badges  and  ribands  of  the  sovereigns  of  Europe  ;  he 
drove  the  youth  of  Helianthus  to  the  African 
shambles  that  their  blood  might  give  him  the  purple 
dye  of  his  own  aggrandisement ;  he  licked  the  dust 
before  the  path  of  kings  ;  he  cringed,  he  slobbered, 
he  lied,  he  flattered,  he  struck  Liberty  in  the  throat, 
and  he  kissed  the  Gyges  of  the  Guthones  on  both 
cheeks ;  —  and  you  tell  me  he  was  sincere  in  his 
youth  !  You  are  fools  !  You  are  fools  !  Such  a  man 
is  false  whilst  he  is  still  an  embryon  in  his  mother's 
womb  !  A  traitor  is  vile  even  whilst  he  is  still  but 
a  germ  in  an  ovary  ! ' 

Then,  once  more,  the  fire  faded  from  his  eyes,  his 
voice  dropped  into  silence,  and  he  fell  back  heavily, 
and  with  exhaustion,  into  the  chair  from  which  he 
had  momentarily  risen.  His  countenance  lost  all 
illumination,  all  expression.  The  flame  of  the  tired 
spirit,  fanned  by  wrath  into  an  instant's  light, 


262  HELIANTHUS  CHAP,  xv 

flickered  and  died  down.  The  intense  emotions 
aroused  in  him  by  the  remembrance  of  a  traitor  were 
succeeded  by  the  dull  gloom  of  age  which  recognises 
its  own  torpor  and  impotence,  its  own  loneliness,  its 
own  inutility. 

*  Go/  said  Ilia,  in  a  low  tone ;  f  go;  he  likes  to  see 
you  sometimes,  but  to-day  you  can  only  offend  him 
and  do  him  harm.' 

Othyris  hesitated,  and  stood  an  instant  before  the 
chair  of  Illyris. 

c  Sir/  he  said,  in  a  low  tone,  { I  sent  no  condolence 
to  the  house  of  Corvus ;  I  sent  no  representative  to 
his  funeral,  or  laurel  to  lay  upon  his  tomb.  I 
consider  that  my  father  had  no  greater  enemy  than 
this  man  who  called  himself  his  most  devoted 
servant,  and  who  perhaps  believed  himself  to  be  so. 
No  one  ever  widened  the  breach  between  the  throne 
and  the  people  with  more  evil  success  than  Corvus.' 

Illyris  made  him  no  reply ;  he  did  not  seem  to 
hear ;  his  thoughts  were  far  away  in  the  greatness  of 
his  past. 

*  Why  will  he  not  believe  in  me  ?     Why  should 
I  be  here  except  in  sincerity  and  in  respect  ? '  said 
Othyris,  turning  to  Ilia  Illyris. 

*  It  is  not  you  whom  he  mistrusts.     It  is  your 
race/  she  replied. 

'  Then  he  is  unjust !  * 

'  He  is  old ! '  she  said,  with  a  sigh. 


OTHYRIS  followed  Illia  across  the  small  flagged 
entrance  into  the  opposite  room,  which  was  a 
counterpart  of  the  one  occupied  by  Platon  Illyris. 

On  a  table  stood  the  pillow  and  cushion  on  which 
she  made  her  lace ;  a  brown  jug,  holding  field 
flowers ;  a  small  antique  bronze  which  had  been 
found  buried  deep  in  the  soil  when  a  great  olive 
had  been  uprooted  in  a  storm,  a  figure  representing 
Narcissus  ;  some  volumes  of  old  books,  companions 
to  those  in  the  other  chamber  ;  nothing  else. 

To  him  it  seemed  wonderful  to  see  a  woman  of 
her  beauty  and  high  intelligence  cheerfully  executing 
the  humblest  kind  of  work,  and  leading  a  life  entirely 
monotonous  and  lonely.  f  How  Gertrude  would 
admire  her,'  he  thought ;  but  he  knew  that  to  bring 
her  and  his  sister-in-law  into  contact  was  as  impos- 
sible as  to  bring  the  stars  of  Cassiopeia  into  the  con- 
stellation of  Perseus.  They  were  divided  for  ever  by 
those  barriers  which  are  at  once  the  most  impassable 
and  the  most  purely  illusory ;  those  that  mankind 
has  constructed  for  its  own  bondage,  the  barriers  of 
caste  and  of  custom. 

t  May  I  see  some  of  your  lace  ? '  he  asked  with 
hesitation,  fearful  of  offending  her. 

{  Oh,  yes,' — she  opened  an  old  olive-wood  cabinet 

263 


264  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

and  took  out  a  cobweb  of  fine  threads  with  lilies  and 
grasses  worked  on  it ;  the  beautiful  old  pillow  lace 
of  other  centuries  admirably  revived. 

{ It  is  beautiful  indeed  ! '  he  exclaimed,  and  gazed 
on  it  with  the  appreciation  and  comprehension  of  a 
connoisseur.  It  was  beautiful  as  the  Ivory  Tower 
had  been  ;  beautiful  as  every  work  of  art  must  be, 
into  which  enter  the  mind,  the  devotion,  the  self- 
sacrifice,  the  spirituality,  of  its  creator.  It  was  a 
little  filmy  thing,  light  as  air,  fragile  as  a  dew-ball  in 
the  grass;  a  rough  touch  could  have  destroyed  it  in 
a  second  of  time  ;  but  it  had  true  art  in  it  as  surely 
as  have  the  Taj  Mahal,  the  Mona  Lisa,  the  belfry 
of  Giotto,  the  verse  of  Shelley,  the  Hermes  of  the 
Vatican. 

f  I  wish  my  sister-in-law,  the  Crown  Princess, 
could  see  this,'  he  added.  (  She  is  a  great  lover  of 
lace.  Might  I  take  it  to  her  ?  She  would  know 
how  to  appreciate  it.' 

c  It  is  not  for  private  sale,  sir,'  she  said  curtly ; 
and  she  put  back  the  lace  into  its  cupboard. 

( I  did  not  intend  to  offend  you,'  he  said  with 
patience  and  humility.  f  I  merely  wished  to  give  my 
sister-in-law  a  great  pleasure ;  for  such  work  as 
yours  is  extremely  rare.' 

But  he  felt  that  his  purpose  had  been  divined, 
and  its  disguise  rudely  brushed  aside.  It  was  quite 
true  that  the  Crown  Princess  was  a  collector  and 
judge  of  hand-made  laces ;  but  he  knew  that  it 
would  not  have  been  for  her  sake  that  he  would  have 
desired  to  purchase  that  exquisite  fairies'  web  for 
some  fabulous  price. 

c  Surely,'  he  added,  c  surely  you  do  not  create  all 
this  beauty  only  to  put  it  away  in  a  shut  drawer  ? ' 


xvi  HELIANTHUS  265 

*  Oh,  no,'  she  said  coldly,  '  it  is  all  bespoken  by  a 
lace  merchant  of  the  north.     Whenever  I  complete 
a  piece  it  goes  to  him.      I   would  ask  you,  sir,'  she 
added,  a  faint  colour  rising  over  her  face,  *  never  to 
speak    of  this   to  my  great-grandfather ;  he  is  not 
aware    of  it ;    he  would   not   understand.       But  it 
would  certainly  displease  him  that  a  descendant  of 
his,  an  Illyris,  should  take  money  from  a  tradesman. 
He    thinks  that    his    own    means    are   enough    for 
everything,  but  they  are  not.     It  is  necessary  to  add 
to  them.' 

*  I  understand,'  said  Othyris.      f  At  his  great  age 
men  do  not  easily  learn  new  lessons,  and  his  pride 
was  always  great.' 

*  Justly  so.' 

4  Justly  ;  yes,  indeed.' 

'  He  might  have  ruled  this  country,  had  he 
chosen.' 

Othyris  smiled  slightly,  but  his  face  flushed. 

*  I  believe  that  he  could,'  he  answered.     *  History 
will  acknowledge  that    he  could,  and    that    he  did 
not    do  so    from    the    noblest    of  all  motives :  the 
reluctance  to  cause  and  carry  on  civil  war.       But  is 
it  generous  to  say  this  to  me  ? ' 

'There  is  neither  generosity  nor  meanness  in  the 
statement  of  a  fact.  All  that  was  done  in  that  re- 
mote time  has  long  passed  into  history.' 

c  A  history  of  which  all  the  nobility  is  with  your 
race  ;  all  the  ingratitude  with  mine.' 

She  was  silent ;  to  deny  the  obvious,  to  excuse  the 
heroic,  was  not  in  the  character  of  this  daughter  of 
heroes. 

Othyris  was  wounded  ;  and  he  was  angered  with 
himself  for  being  so.  He  loathed  the  whole  period 


266  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

of  that  troubled  time  in  which  his  great-grandsire 
had  beaten  out  a  crown  of  gold  and  iron  in  the 
furnace  of  war ;  a  crown  which  would  never  have 
been  his,  or  his  descendants',  if  Platon  Illyris  had 
so  willed. 

Whenever  he  passed  the  great  sepulchre,  called  in 
Helios  the  House  of  the  Immortals,  with  its  peristyle 
of  marble  and  porphyry  and  its  dome  of  glittering 
gilded  tiles,  which  covered  the  remains  of  Theodoric 
of  Gunderode  and  which  from  a  cypress-crowned 
eminence  dominated  the  city,  he  looked  away  from  it 
and  felt  neither  reverence  nor  gratitude  to  this  mem- 
ory so  near  to  him  which  was  already  swelling  into 
legend.  All  that  Ilia  had  said  had  been  true ;  but 
it  was  its  truth  which  hurt  him.  If  Platon  Illyris 
had  chosen,  once  upon  a  time,  the  Gunderode  had 
never  reigned  beside  the  Mare  Magnum,  nor  been 
laid  to  rest  in  the  Helianthine  Pantheon. 

The  voice  of  Ilia  roused  him,  clear  as  the  sound 
of  a  silver  bell,  but  cold  as  a  flake  of  snow. 

'  Sir,  you  will  pardon  me  if  I  leave  you.  I  have 
my  household  duties.' 

*  If  my  sister-in-law,  the  Crown  Princess,  would 
receive  you,  would   you   allow  me   to  take  you   to 
her?' 

'  No,  I  would  not.' 

The  words  were  ungracious  but  the  tone  was 
gentle. 

f  She  is  a  good  woman.' 

*  I  have  always  heard  so.' 
<  Well,  then  —  why  ? ' 

'  You  must  know  I  would  not  pass  the  threshold 
of  a  Gunderode.' 

*  It  is  you  who  are  prejudiced.' 


xvi  HELIANTHUS  267 

'  Consistency  is  not  prejudice.' 
4  You  need  a  female  friend.' 

*  If  I  did,  I  should  not  seek  one  in  a  palace.     But 
I  do  not.' 

t  The  Princess  can  be  a  very  warm  friend.' 
c  She  could  not  be  so  to  me,  nor  I  to  her.' 

*  Wherefore  ? ' 

'  You  must  know  very  well.  I  do  not  think  that 
you  should  even  speak  of  such  a  thing.' 

He  did  know ;  he  knew  that  it  was  impossible  to 
bring  together  these  two  women  who  were  so  far 
asunder  through  every  circumstance  and  feeling  of 
their  lives,  every  sentiment,  habit,  tradition,  and 
belief.  The  prejudices  of  his  relative  might,  he 
thought,  have  been  vanquished,  for  he  had  gained 
her  goodwill ;  but  the  more  stubborn  resistance  of 
the  daughter  of  Illyris  would  be  unconquerable  ;  she 
would  have  thought  herself  unworthy  to  bear  the 
great  name  of  her  people  if  she  had  ever  crossed 
the  threshold  of  the  residence  of  any  member  of 
the  reigning  family. 

'You  may  be  sure  of  my  absolute  discretion  as 
regards  your  beautiful  point  £  aiguille  J  answered 
Othyris.  *  But  I  wish  you  would  transfer  your  fa- 
vours from  this  northern  trader  to  my  sister-in-law.' 

'  The  Crown  Princess  can  purchase  it  from  the 
trader,  sir.' 

f  May  I  take  her  the  address  of  the  merchant  ? ' 

She  hesitated  a  moment,  then  wrote  a  name  and 
address  on  a  slip  of  paper  and  gave  it  to  him.  He 
thanked  her ;  then  still  lingered,  loth  to  leave  the 
subject  or  the  place. 

'  Is  not  such  fine  work  as.  that  very  trying  to  the 
eyes  ? '  he  said.  *  I  have  always  heard  that  it  is.' 


268  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

c  I  do  not  find  it  so ;  however,  it  is  perhaps 
because  I  only  work  about  two  hours  in  the  early 
morning;  rarely  afterwards.' 

c  But  would  it  not  be  more  agreeable  to  you  to 
give  your  creations  direct  into  the  hands  of  apprecia- 
tive persons  than  to  let  them  go  through  those  of 
mere  tradesmen  to  any  buyer  ? ' 

*  No :  the  one  would  mean  patronage ;  the  other 
is  independence.' 

He  saw  what  she  meant  and  respected  her  mean- 
ing. 

'  I  only  regret,'  he  said,  l  that  you  will  not  do  me 
the  honour  to  treat  me  as  a  friend.' 

1  There  can  be  no  friendship  between  one  of  your 
House  and  one  of  mine,'  she  answered. 

He  did  not  urge  the  point,  nor  did  he  resent  the 
equality  on  which  she  placed  their  families.  It  was 
refreshing  to  him  to  meet  with  any  one  by  whom  his 
rank  was  ignored ;  it  was  like  a  draught  of  spring 
water  to  one  satiated  by  a  surfeit  of  sweet  champagne. 
But  he  saw  that  his  pleasure  or  displeasure  was  a 
thing  quite  indifferent  to  her. 

When  he  passed  out  into  the  narrow,  vaulted 
stone  passage,  the  door  of  the  old  man's  study  was 
closed.  He  did  not  endeavour  to  go  in  again, 
but  went  out  into  the  open  air  where  the  sunlight 
fell  through  the  grey  traceries  of  the  olive  leaves  and 
the  doves  were  cooing  in  the  great  gnarled  branches 
above. 

'  You  who  have  so  much,'  said  the  voice  of  his 
conscience  to  him,  '  cannot  you  leave  this  wild  dove 
alone  on  her  olive  branch  ? ' 

But  his  heart,  rebellious,  answered  :  (  What  have 
I  ?  Nothing;  since  I  have  nothing  that  contents  me.' 


xvi  HELIANTHUS  269 

Ilia  Illyris  was  the  only  woman  on  earth  who 
could,  in  all  sincerity  and  unconsciousness,  have 
treated  his  rank  as  a  thing  indifferent  to  her.  Her 
complete  isolation  from  the  world,  and  ignorance  of 
its  values  and  its  habits ;  the  disdain  which  she 
inherited  for  all  the  distinctions  of  position,  and  all 
the  simulacrum  of  royalty  and  power,  made  her 
omission  of  all  the  deference  which  others  showed 
him,  and  the  simplicity  and  familiarity  of  her  inter- 
course with  him,  entirely  natural  and  indeed  inevi- 
table. It  was  as  welcome  to  him  as  was  to  the  weary 
wayfarer  a  draught  of  the  clear  spring  water  which 
flowered  under  the  parsley  and  cresses  of  the  rivulets 
of  Mount  Atys. 

Who  could  surpass  the  Illyris  in  their  traditions  ? 
Her  pride  was  not  in  herself,  but  in  those  whose 
name  she  bore. 

As  the  companionship  of  Ednor  was  agreeable 
to  Othyris  as  the  breeze  and  smell  of  the  sea  are 
agreeable  after  hours  spent  in  a  crowded  ball-room, 
so  the  little  house  of  Illyris  was  a  refuge  to  him  from 
the  Court  and  from  the  world,  as  a  shady  moss- 
grown  nook  in  a  woodland  is  to  the  harried  deer. 

Ilia  Illyris  showed  Othyris  no  disrespect,  but  she 
showed  him  no  deference.  Usually,  wherever  he 
appeared,  women  were  in  a  flutter  of  expectation  and 
displayed  their  charms  as  pedlars  their  wares.  Her 
stillness,  her  calmness,  the  unvarying  simplicity  of 
her  manner,  and  the  occasional  severity  of  her  words, 
were  a  fascination  to  him  strong  in  proportion  to  its 
novelty.  She  might  have  been  a  woman  of  the 
Homeric  age.  He  had  asked  for  her  friendship  at 
first  sight;  but  when  six  months  had  passed  he 
could  not  flatter  himself  that  he  had  obtained  it. 


270  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

Had  he  deserved  it?  He  could  not,  to  be  sincere 
with  himself,  think  so.  Weighed  by  her  standards, 
his  life  seemed  to  him  frivolous,  unproductive,  selfish. 
Besides,  he  saw  that  he  was  to  her  always  the  de- 
scendant of  the  man  who  had  betrayed  and  imprisoned 
Platon  Illyris. 

To  the  temper  of  Ilia  Illyris,  treachery  was  the 
one  unpardonable  sin  ;  tainting  for  centuries,  genera- 
tion after  generation,  unpardonable,  unforgettable, 
eldest-born  of  hell,  —  of  that  hell  which  men  have 
created  for  themselves.  The  crime  of  the  Gunderode 
seemed  to  her  an  offence  against  the  nation  still 
more  than  against  her  race.  Racial  feud  is  dark  and 
strong  and  deathless  in  the  national  character  of  this 
country,  still  barbaric  in  so  much,  and  classic  in  so 
much,  and  mingled  with  so  many  alien  elements 
brought  into  it  by  its  conquered,  and  by  its  con- 
querors ;  by  those  whom  it  had  dragged  at  the 
chariot  wheels  of  its  triumphs,  and  by  those  who 
had  overrun  its  soil  and  destroyed  its  civilisation. 

But  what  wounded  and  stung  Othyris  was  that 
he  made  no  way  with  her  as  a  man  ;  as  a  prince  he 
was  quite  willing  to  abdicate  all  rights  of  rank,  he 
was  satisfied  to  come  there  as  any  scholar  might  have 
gone  to  any  teacher;  but  he  was  mortified  to  find 
that  his  own  individuality,  when  it  had  laid  aside  all 
adventitious  claims  of  place  or  privilege,  should  seem 
so  little  welcome  to  her.  She  was  more  cordial  to 
Janos,  the  peasant  who  dwelt  in  a  hut  near  them  and 
did  such  rough  work  as  the  woman  Ma'ia  could 
not  do  indoors  and  out ;  a  shaggy,  bearded  figure 
like  a  faun,  clothed  in  goatskin  in  winter  and  in 
summer  almost  nude. 

*  She  has  the  name  of  Rhea  Silvia/   he  thought. 


xvi  HELIANTHUS  271 

'  She  should  bear  a  Romulus  in  her  womb,  who  would 
be  eponymous  to  an  eternal  city.' 

Her  entire  unlikeness  to  all  others  of  her  sex 
fascinated  Othyris ;  he  could  no  more  have  spoken 
to  her  lightly  than  he  could  have  struck  the  statue 
of  Astarte  in  the  face.  Before  her,  he  was  subdued 
into  submission,  and  took  pleasure  in  the  mysterious 
and  novel  timidity  he  felt ;  but  away  from  her  he 
felt  a  restless  vexation  at  his  own  subjection  and 
rage. 

'  I  am  like  some  awkward,  blushing  Cymon,  of  the 
cattle-stall  and  the  ploughshare ! '  he  thought  with 
anger.  She  was  a  beautiful  woman,  but  she  might 
have  been  made,  he  thought,  of  ivory,  or  marble,  or 
silver,  like  that  wondrous  statue  of  Astarte  which  had 
once  been  throned  upon  these  hills,  and  of  which  the 
traditions  remained  in  the  pages  of  Halicarnassus. 
She  seemed  absolutely  detached  from  modern  life, 
wholly  insensible  to  the  influence  of  others,  entirely 
callous  also  to  the  pain  or  the  offence  her  words 
might  cause.  Yet  he  could  not  feel  that  such  speech 
was  rudeness  in  her,  or  was  intended  to  wound ;  it 
was  the  direct  and  simple  expression  of  her  thoughts, 
and  what  she  had  said  was  true.  Any  denial  of  its 
truth  would  have  died  on  his  lips  if  he  had  tried  to 
utter  it. 

Again  and  again  Othyris  had  said  to  himself:  'Is 
this  the  only  result  of  that  mighty  and  glorious  epos 
—  that  we  are  here  ? '  What  greater  bathos  could 
there  be  than  this,  that  the  resurrection  of  a  nation, 
the  ideals  of  its  youth,  the  sacrifices  of  its  women,  the 
high  and  burning  hopes  of  its  patriots,  should  have 
had  as  their  only  result  the  paltry,  fulsome,  and  useless 
ceremonials  of  a  royal  Court,  the  corruptions  and  con- 


272  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

ventionalities  of  a  modern  government,  the  tyrannies 
of  taxation  and  contravention,  the  endless  waste  of  an 
insatiable  exchequer,  the  slavery  of  military  conscrip- 
tion, the  comedy  and  the  formulae  of  parliaments  ? 

The  thunders  had  rolled  along  the  mountains,  the 
volcanic  flames  had  leaped,  the  winds  of  the  storms 
had  swept  through  the  air,  the  glorious  sunrise  had 
shone  forth  from  the  darkness,  and  the  day  had 
dawned  —  and  for  what  issue  ?  Oh  ridiculus  mus  ? 
Ilia  and  Illyris  could  not  feel  the  paltriness  of  the 
issue  in  contrast  to  the  splendour  of  the  effort  more 
acutely  than  he  himself  felt  it. 

*  It  is  not  wholly  our  fault,'  he  said  with  hesita- 
tion to  Ilia  one  day.  f  Do  not  think  that  I  say  so 
because  I  am  a  son  of  the  King.  Our  race  is  akin 
to  Helianthus,  not  in  harmony  with  its  past  or  its 
present.  But  were  we  other  than  we  are,  I  doubt  if 
we  could  alter  the  national  character  or  the  corrup- 
tion which  has  become  the  marrow  of  the  bones  of 
the  people.  Helianthus  has  been  too  long  soaked  in 
the  poisonous  vapours  of  tyranny,  and  bribery,  and 
untruth  and  all  their  congeners,  to  wash  in  a  Jordan 
of  political  morality  and  become  clean.  The  disease 
has  entered  the  innermost  cells  of  the  people's  flesh 
and  of  their  brain ;  the  greatest  ruler,  the  holiest 
saint,  could  do  nothing  to  cut  it  out ;  it  will  live  on 
them  as  long  as  the  nation  lives.  Can  you  ever 
obtain  a  plain  answer  to  a  direct  question  ?  Can  any 
one  buy  the  commonest  thing  without  an  effort 
being  made  to  cheat  in  the  matter  of  its  price  ?  Do 
you  know  anything  of  the  conduct  of  elections, 
municipal,  political,  or  ecclesiastical  ?  Is  it  possible 
for  a  man  or  a  woman  to  enter  any  career,  or  to 
advance  in  any,  without  under  hand  methods  anddis- 


xvi  HELIANTHUS  273 

honest  craft  ?  Can  a  mere  teacher  in  a  village  school 
be  given  the  place  without  pressure  and  influence 
indirect  and  often  injurious  to  the  public  interests? 
You  here  in  your  woodland  solitude  know  and  see 
nothing  of  the  sea  of  mud  in  which  the  Helianthine 
public  life  has  its  being.  Were  my  father  Solomon 
or  Antoninus  he  could  do  little  or  nothing.  Were 
we  all  demi-gods  or  angels  we  could  not  strive 
against  the  national  debauchery  of  the  national 
conscience.' 

Ilia  was  silent ;  she  could  not  contradict,  she 
would  not  assent ;  but  she  realised  that  beyond  the 
trees  and  rocks  and  torrents  of  her  dwelling-place 
there  were  many  things  of  which  she  had  no  know- 
ledge. Even  the  great  and  virile  intellect  of  her 
only  relative  was  dimmed  by  the  passage  of  many 
years  and  the  effect  of  long  isolation,  so  that  perhaps 
it  knew  little  of  that  modern  life  with  which  he  had 
never  any  contact.  Janos  and  his  fellows  were 
much  what  their  forefathers  had  been  two  thousand 
years  before,  and  even  their  religion,  though  it  bore 
another  name,  was  identical  in  superstition  and  in 
symbol  with  that  of  the  days  of  Pan. 

Ilia  lived  out  of  the  world  of  men ;  she  realised 
that  she  might  be  unable  to  judge  it. 


CHAPTER   XVII 

THE  Helianthine  fleet  was  anchored  in  the  bay, 
that  beautiful  and  romantic  Bay  of  Helios  which  has 
been  renowned  through  a  score  of  centuries  for  the 
many  sea-fights  which  have  dyed  its  blue  waters  red 
with  carnage  ever  since  the  days  when  the  temples 
of  Poseidon,  newly  built  with  freshly-quarried 
marbles,  had  crowned  the  semicircle  of  its  moun- 
tainous coast.  King  John  kept  his  navy,  as  all 
sovereigns  keep  theirs,  nowadays,  as  a  visiting-card 
to  be  left  on  neighbours,  near  or  far,  and  sent  about 
the  seas  of  the  world  to  produce  amity,  or  threaten 
enmity,  as  might  happen  to  be  necessary.  It  is  an 
expensive  visiting-card,  but  as  the  nation  pays  the 
price  of  it,  a  sovereign  and  a  government  need  not 
concern  themselves  about  its  cost.  It  is  also  some- 
times a  cumbrous  card,  when  it  happens  now  and 
then  that  its  errand  is  repented  of  when  it  has  already 
had  time  to  weigh  anchors  and  get  up  steam.  But 
as  an  innocuous  way  of  making  yourself  disagreeable 
to  some,  or  amiable  to  others,  without  binding  your- 
self by  treaties,  it  has  no  equal ;  and  if  the  cost  of 
sending  it  about  is  vast,  well  —  it  is  the  taxpayer 
who  suffers,  and  he  is  scarcely  aware  of  what  he  pays, 
since  it  is  all  comprised  in  the  Naval  Estimates,  with 
which  the  taxpayer  does  not  often  occupy  himself, 
considering  them  the  affair  of  experts. 

274 


CHAP,  xvn  HELIANTHUS  275 

The  festive  display  of  the  Helianthine  fleet  closely 
resembled  a  hostile  demonstration,  as  its  ironclads 
lay  on  the  dancing  waters  of  a  glad  azure  sea.  The 
huge,  ugly  metal  hulls  were  in  line,  one  after  another, 
as  near  shore  as  they  could  dare  to  approach;  and 
their  gigantic  guns  bellowed  defiance  across  the  bay, 
as  though  the  whole  of  mankind  were  their  foes. 

Othyris,  as  he  looked  at  these  great  grey  monsters, 
lying  motionless  on  the  water,  their  ugliness  only 
accentuated  by  the  festoons  of  coloured  bunting  hung 
from  mast  and  funnel,  seemed  to  see  as  in  a  vision 
the  first  naval  war  of  the  future  in  that  lovely  bay  of 
Helios  :  the  new  steel  and  aluminium  war-ships  heel- 
ing over,  exploding,  sinking,  going  down  in  whirl- 
pools of  blood-stained  water,  churning  the  bodies  of 
dead  and  dying  men  in  the  agitated  foam,  whilst 
some  other  victorious  fleet  rode  triumphant  on  the 
waves  of  the  Mare  Magnum,  firing  in  derisive  exul- 
tation over  the  abyss  in  which  his  country's  honour 
had  perished  ! 

But  he  alone  was  a  prey  to  such  melancholy  fore- 
bodings ;  every  one  else  was  rejoicing  and  proud, 
for  at  this  moment  the  sea-monsters  were  on  a  peace- 
ful errand  bent.  The  fleet  was  nominally  commanded 
by  the  young  Duke  of  Esthonia,  virtually  by  an  old 
sea-dog  admiral ;  and  the  walls  of  the  city,  the  beach, 
the  bastions,  the  docks,  the  piers,  the  olive-clothed 
hills,  were  all  crowded  with  an  interested  and  admir- 
ing crowd,  assembled  to  wish  the  squadron  good- 
speed  on  its  cruise.  It  was  going  this  time  to  visit 
the  adjacent  country  of  Gallia,  by  way  of  proving 
the  truth  of  the  adage  that  the  love  of  one  neighbour 
often  springs  from  the  hatred  of  another ;  for  the 
diplomacy  of  Helianthus  at  that  moment  was  to 


276  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

ascertain  her  value  to  others  without  ticketing  her- 
self with  any  definite  price,  and  to  utilise  the  good- 
will of  her  allies  in  order  to  scare  into  dumbness  and 
numbness  those  who  were  always  ready  to  dismember 
her.  For  Helianthus  to  be  friendly  in  a  sweet  and 
cordial  way  to  Gallia,  was  to  make  the  price  of 
Helianthus  go  up  to  Gallia's  foes. 

The  Finance  Minister  and  the  Chambers  of  the 
Empire  of  the  Guthones  had  at  the  beginning  of 
the  session  put  a  tax  upon  Helianthine  honey,  which 
was  the  best  in  the  world,  and  upon  the  fleece  of  the 
Helianthine  flocks,  which  were  equally  famous  — 
both  flocks  and  bees  were  nourished  on  the  thyme- 
covered  hills  of  which  classic  poets  had  sung ;  and 
the  imposition  of  two  such  duties  seemed  but  a  poor 
return  for  the  constant  and  costly  state  of  prepared 
readiness  for  war  in  which  the  Helianthine  people 
had  been  kept  by  their  rulers  to  please  the  Emperor 
Julius.  It  was  thought  well  to  remind  these  Gu- 
thonic  ingrates  that  neither  Helianthus  nor  Gallia 
was  a  quantity  that  could  with  impunity  be  neglected 
in  the  calculations  of  the  Julian  diplomacy ;  that, 
after  all,  Gallia  and  Helianthus  were  kindred,  so 
said  philologists,  if  like  other  kith  and  kin  they  had 
often  quarrelled  and  fought. 

So  the  great  ships  lay  like  resting  whales  on  the 
heaving  swell  of  the  Mare  Magnum,  ready  to  get 
under  weigh ;  whilst  Gallia,  who  did  not  mistake 
the  motives  for  which  she  was  to  be  visited,  was  busy 
embellishing  one  of  her  chief  ports,  painting  her 
lamp-posts,  cleaning  her  revolving  lights,  hanging 
up  the  colours  of  Helianthus  with  her  own,  burnish- 
ing her  ordnance,  holystoning  her  decks,  getting 
ready  reviews,  illuminations,  and  banquets,  and 


xvir  HELIANTHUS  277 

preparing  to  do  the  honours  graciously,  though 
keeping  her  weather-eye  open.  The  naval  pageant, 
the  banquets,  the  presents,  would  cost  her  a  vast 
deal  of  money ;  but  in  republics  as  in  monarchies, 
Chambers  vote  and  Ministers  spend  happily  and 
easily  moneys  which  are  not  their  own.  The  country 
of  Gallia  was  a  republic ;  and  a  republic  on  the 
frontier  of  a  monarchy  is  like  a  factory  of  dynamite 
established  close  to  the  house  of  a  gentleman  who  is 
afraid  of  a  popgun.  It  is  true  that  this  republic  was 
almost  indistinguishable  from  a  monarchy,  having  a 
huge  standing  army,  a  very  expensive  fleet,  a  most 
corrupt  plutocracy,  a  Press  entirely  owned  by  finan- 
ciers, a  number  of  worrying,  fidgeting,  and  irritating 
by-laws,  a  most  oppressive  taxation,  and  everything 
else  as  like  a  monarchy  as  could  be. 

Still  a  republic  it  was ;  and,  although  its  chief 
magistrate  was  a  respectable  manufacturer  of  woollen 
stuffs,  who  did  his  best  to  look  as  like  a  king  as  he 
could  by  means  of  stars  and  crosses  on  his  chest, 
outriders  before  his  carriage,  bloody  battues  in  his 
parks,  public  appearances  in  opera-boxes  and  at 
race  meetings,  and  absolute  inaccessibility  to  any 
plebeian,  still,  a  king  he  was  not ;  and  therefore, 
to  a  king,  he  was  an  uncomfortable  neighbour,  and 
the  republic  over  which  he  presided  was  a  painfully 
unknown  quantity  —  an  x  which  disturbed  all  the 
calculations  of  hereditary  potentates,  whether  consti- 
tutional or  absolute,  whether  sprung  up  like  mush- 
rooms from  the  germs  on  battlefields,  or  embedded 
like  fossils  in  the  sandstone  of  ages.  All  the  emper- 
ors and  kings  caressed  the  excellent  wool-merchant, 
treated  him  as  if  he  were  one  of  themselves,  and  to 
their  astonishment  found  him  a  very  good  shot.  But 


278  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

they  were  always  exceedingly  nervous  about  him,  and 
thought  him  a  terrible  example  to  the  wool-merchants 
of  their  own  dominions.  The  Powers  could  have 
paired  themselves  off,  whether  for  dance  or  duel, 
quite  comfortably  if  Gallia  and  her  wool-merchant 
had  not  existed ;  but  Gallia  was  always  there,  to  give 
herself  airs  as  the  terra  incommoda^  or  to  offer  herself 
in  alliance,  no  one  of  them  was  ever  sure  where  or 
to  whom. 

The  sovereign  of  Helianthus,  like  all  his  brothers 
in  the  purple,  was  always  convinced  that  Gallia 
was  conspiring  against  himself.  She  was  not, 
because  she  was  chiefly  governed  by  her  trading  and 
speculating  classes,  who  loved  money  and  hated  con- 
spiracies. But  this  King  John  did  not  believe  was  any 
security  against  her  restless  passions  and  her  ambi- 
tious instincts,  which  even  the  great  syndicates  might 
any  day  be  unable  to  control.  Gallia  was  a  blood- 
mare  who  might  take  her  head  and  bolt  at  any 
moment,  without  warning,  and  carry  her  respectable 
wool-merchant  to  an  Armageddon,  as  helpless  as  was 
ever  John  Gilpin. 

Therefore,  since  such  was  the  custom  of  his 
brother-potentates,  he  sent  the  finest  vessels  of  his 
navy  to  pay  a  visit  to  the  southern  ports  of  Gallia, 
and  his  favourite  son  to  hobnob  amicably  with  the 
excellent  wool-stapler,  whilst  Helianthine  and  Gallian 
blue-jackets  would  get  drunk  together  in  the  streets 
in  fraternal  affection  —  affection  which  would  not  pre- 
vent their  blowing  each  other  into  shreds  the  very 
next  day  if  they  should  be  so  ordered  to  do  by  their 
respective  rulers.  For  sailors,  like  soldiers,  have  no 
politics. 

The    great    vessels   were   weighing    anchor    and 


xvn  HELIANTHUS  279 

departing  on  their  mission  of  fraternal  love  and 
enormous  expenditure ;  Othyris  and  Gavroche  re- 
turned to  the  shore  in  a  long-boat  rowed  by 
sailors. 

f  What  good  do  you  suppose  this  will  do  ? '  said 
Othyris  to  Tyras,  who,  like  himself,  had  been  com- 
pelled by  the  etiquette  of  his  family  to  bid  Esthonia 
adieu  and  bon  voyage  on  the  deck  of  the  great  flag- 
ship, the  Polyphemus. 

Gavroche,  who  had  painfully  dragged  his  lazy 
length  up  and  down  the  companion-way,  gave  his 
little  hollow  laugh,  which  had  the  sound  of  a  tubercu- 
lous cough  joined  to  a  Mephistophelean  chuckle. 

f  It  will  benefit  our  brother's  babies  :  the  wool- 
stapler  will  send  them  cartloads  of  toys  and  bonbons. 
I  do  not  see  any  other  particular  object  in  the  expedi- 
tion.' 

{ It  will  cost  as  much  as  would  feed  the  eastern 
provinces  for  three  months.' 

f  The  eastern  provinces  do  not  enter  into  the 
haute  politique  of  our  father.' 

1  Their  lads  are  undersized,'  said  Othyris  bitterly. 
c  They  count  little  in  the  drill-sergeants'  eyes.' 

The  eastern  provinces  were  the  crippled  children 
of  Helianthus.  They  were  in  large  districts  mere 
sandy  wastes,  almost  oriental  in  their  barrenness  ; 
dry,  searching  winds  swept  them  in  spring,  and  their 
water-sources  dried  up  by  Pentecost ;  whilst  in  winter, 
oftentimes,  their  streams  overflowed  vast  districts, 
and  their  tilled  lands  were  turned  into  stagnant  lakes. 
Ruins  of  aqueducts  and  reservoirs  showed  what 
colossal,  and  doubtless  efficient,  works  had  existed  to 
rectify  the  faults  and  abuses  of  nature  in  remote 
times,  of  which  the  very  dates  were  forgotten.  But, 


280  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

now,  there  was  no  attempt  made  on  the  part  of  the 
State  to  aid  a  sickly  and  helpless  peasantry  in  its  con- 
test with  overwhelming  forces,  and  the  east  was  the 
spavined  mare  in  the  stable  of  John  of  Gunderode. 
Its  districts  knew  no  royal  smile,  they  received  no 
Ministerial  visits ;  they  were  seldom  spoken  of  in 
the  Chambers,  and  never  provided  for  in  any  Budget. 
The  tax-collector  remembered  them  :  no  one  else, 
except  the  military  authorities,  who  took  away  a 
certain  percentage  of  their  lean  and  tired  youngsters, 
who  were  scarcely  good  enough  for  the  cannon's 
maw. 

As  the  long-boat  bearing  Othyris  and  Gavroche 
sped  across  the  stretch  of  calm  blue  water,  freshened 
by  a  light  southerly  breeze,  the  range  of  the  Mount 
Atys  peaks  and  crags  faced  them,  with  the  noon- 
day sun  illumining  the  snow  which  lingered  on  the 
summits.  As  the  distance  narrowed  between  them 
and  the  land,  Othyris  could  distinguish  the  lines  of 
the  Helichrysum  hills,  and  through  his  glass  saw  the 
olive  woods  of  their  lower  slopes,  and  the  whiteness 
of  the  broad,  smooth,  sandy  beach  below.  He 
could  even  see  the  threads  of  the  many  water-courses  ; 
the  gleam  of  the  marble  strata ;  the  warm  hues  of 
the  porphyry  cliffs ;  and  discerned  even  a  speck 
which  he  thought  was  the  dwelling-house  of  Illyris. 

How  willingly  would  he  have  lived  there  himself; 
the  world  forgetting,  by  the  world  forgot ! 

Happy  were  those  who  dwelt  in  such  seclusion ! 

1  What  do  you  see  over  there  ? '  said  Gavroche, 
raising  his  own  glass  in  curiosity. 

' 1  see  Mount  Atys,'  said  Othyris  tranquilly. 
'  Look  !  —  that  peak  with  the  snow  still  on  it  and  the 
clouds  upon  its  side.' 


xvn  HELIANTHUS  281 

Gavroche  yawned,  seeing  nothing  of  interest. 

*  The  Municipality  is  selling  the  Helichrysum  hills 
to  an  Acetylene  Company,'  he  said,  with  relish.     *  I 
can  put  you  on  the  thing,  if  you  like.' 

c  Neither  acetylene  nor  companies  attract  me.' 

'  You  are  not  of  your  time.' 

{  No,  I  am  not.  Is  it  true  that  they  dare  to  dream 
of  touching  these  hills  ? ' 

'  Certainly.  It  is  an  admirable  speculation.  It 
will  pay  thirty  per  cent,  perhaps  forty.  It  is  a 
Guthonic  Syndicate.' 

'  A  Syndicate  in  this  country  is  always  Guthonic 
when  it  is  not  Candarian.' 

*  Well,  of  course,  those  people  have  enterprise  and 
money  ;  we  have  neither.' 

*  We  have  Mount  Atys  and  its  olive  woods.' 

1  Precisely  ;  and  so,  as  we  cannot  ourselves  utilise 
what  we  have  got,  we  sell  or  lease  it  to  those  who 
can.' 

1  For  three  thousand  years  no  one  has  felt  any 
necessity  to  touch  those  hills  ;  they  belong  to  Isis 
and  her  son.' 

*  Who  are  they  ? '  said  Tyras.     *  It  is  going  to  be 
a  big  affair,'  he  added.     '  Our  dear  father  will  get  a  lot 
of  script.    The  Syndicate  has  not  got  fairly  into  saddle 
yet ;  but  it  will  be  a  very  big  boom.     The  acetylene 
is  only  a  beginning.     There  are  no  end  of  schemes  — 
a  funicular  railway,  a  seaside  suburb,  a  sanatorium, 
of  course  an  observatory  on  the  top,  a  lot  of  marble 
quarrying  and  timber  felling ;  the  thing  is  only  in 
embryo  at  present,  but  His   Majesty  is  very  keen 
about  it.' 

*  Do  you  mean  that  the  King  favours  any  specula- 
tion so  monstrous? ' 


282  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

c  Lord,  yes  !  He  approves  and  appreciates  any- 
thing which  puts  money  in  his  pocket.' 

1  But  it  will  ruin  the  view  of  the  bay  !  ' 

*  Do  you  think  the  King  ever  looks  at  the 
view  ? ' 

£  But  Mount  Atys  is  sacred  ground ' 

<To  you  and  a  few  sentimentalists ;  I  believe 
Homer  was  the  first  of  them ! ' 

( They  might  as  well  sell  Mount  Sinai ! ' 

f  They  will,  no  doubt,  if  His  Majesty  ever  is 
made  King  of  Jerusalem.  The  Hotel  of  the  Cross 
and  the  Pension  Judas  will  be  very  fashionable;' 
and  Gavroche  laughed  till  he  coughed. 

Othyris  turned  away  in  disgust.  Was  it  possible 
this  scheme  existed  ?  He  continued  to  gaze  at  the 
dazzling  white  of  the  lofty  cone  rising  above  the 
purple  and  grey  mosses  of  the  pine  and  olive  woods, 
clothing  the  hills  where  Ilia  Illyris  dwelt,  the  hills  of 
Isis  and  of  Atys. 

The  boat  cut  a  swift  path  through  the  azure 
water.  The  fleet  they  had  left  was  getting  under 
weigh  in  the  sparkling  sunshine  of  the  early  morning, 
going  on  its  errand  of  spinning  an  amity  as  brittle  as 
spun  glass,  and  weaving  an  alliance  as  friable  as  sugar. 
The  war-ships  were  steaming  towards  the  open  sea, 
and  the  boat  was  rowed  towards  the  harbour  beneath 
the  walls  of  the  Soleia  Palace,  being  received  by  the 
people  with  cheers.  The  many-coloured  masses  of 
the  crowds  on  shore  began  to  move,  and  unwind 
themselves,  and  little  by  little  disappear,  like 
bunches  of  flowers  untied  and  thrown  away  into 
the  dust. 

CA11  those  numbers  packed  together  to  see  iron- 
clads weigh  anchor !  '  thought  Othyris, f  and  not  a 


xvn  HELIANTHUS  283 

man  amongst  them,  probably,  to  try  and  save  Mount 
Atys.' 

Without  loss  of  time  he  instructed  one  of  his 
most  confidential  servants  to  obtain  all  the  informa- 
tion possible  as  to  the  projected  purchase  by  the 
foreign  Syndicate. 

If  the  Helichrysum  hills  were  sold  by  the  City 
Corporation,  it  was  scarcely  probable  that  the  home 
of  Illyris  would  be  spared.  Where  the  lumbermen 
make  a  clearing  in  a  wood,  the  nests  of  the  birds  fall 
and  the  form  of  the  hare  is  trodden  underfoot.  He 
knew  that  the  owner  of  Aquilegia  was  a  trader  in  the 
maritime  quarter  of  Helios,  dealing  with  the  fruit 
brigs  of  the  coast ;  a  man  who  would  be  certain  to 
part  with  the  hillside  property  if  a  good  offer  were 
made  to  him.  Othyris  would  before  then  havebought 
the  little  property,  had  he  not  feared  the  resentment 
of  Illyris  if  he  ever  learned  that  he  had  become  the 
tenant  of  a  Gunderode. 

Aged  and  infirm  as  he  was,  Illyris  would  have 
found  strength  to  leave  any  place  embittered  to  him 
by  an  offered  charity  ;  and  even  had  he  means  to  buy 
the  property,  he  might  be  driven  out  by  expropria- 
tion. He  had  paid  the  rent  ever  since  his  return  from 
exile,  and  had  almost  forgotten  that  he  was  not  the 
owner  of  the  place.  It  had  never  occurred  to  him  to 
buy  it,  although  Ilia,  who  desired  to  do  so,  put  aside 
a  certain  proportion  of  the  money  made  by  her  lace 
work,  and  saw  the  little  pile  of  gold  coins  increase 
each  year  with  pleasure.  Every  tree  was  dear  to  her, 
every  little  singing  stream  had  its  echo  in  her  heart ; 
she  knew  where  the  earliest  violets  bloomed,  where 
the  hyacinths,  like  those  of  Wordsworth,  seemed  the 
blue  of  heaven  fallen  on  earth,  where  the  nightin- 


284  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

gales  built  their  nests  amongst  the  rotting  leaves  and 
drooping  fritillaria,  and  where  the  striped  toads  made 
their  summer  homes  under  the  ferns  and  took  their 
winter  sleep  beneath  the  rocks.  The  love  of  those 
simple  things  is  a  passion  with  the  soul  which 
harbours  it ;  a  passion  which  has  the  purity  of  all 
impersonal  emotion.  To  those  who  feel  it,  the 
heart  seems  to  grow  into  the  soil  like  the  roots  of 
some  sensitive  plant.  To  such  as  these  no  change  is 
needed  other  than  the  changes  given  by  the  seasons, 
by  the  daybreak,  and  the  sunset.  Othyris  knew  that 
this  was  the  passion  of  Ilia  Illyris  for  the  solitude  of 
Aquilegia.  Driven  out  from  it,  she  would  be  lost 
and  unhappy  as  a  doe  driven  from  its  forest. 

Willingly  would  Othyris  have  given  Illyris  any 
part  of  the  beauty  of  ^Enothrea  or  any  other  of  his 
estates  ;  with  gladness  would  he  have  offered  him 
any  choice  of  his  lands  and  houses.  But  he  dared 
not ;  he  knew  that  to  do  so  would  be  both  useless 
and  offensive  ;  the  old  lion  would  couch  on  no  alien 
lair. 

On  the  morrow  his  agent  gave  him  full  informa- 
tion as  to  the  impending  purchase.  The  sale  by  the 
Municipality  was  decided  on,  and  only  the  assent  of 
the  King  was  necessary ;  but  there  was  no  doubt 
of  this,  nor  of  its  ratification  by  Parliament.  The 
money  for  the  payment  was  guaranteed  by  the  great 
financier,  Max  Vreiheiden.  Nothing  could  look 
more  promising,  at  least  on  paper. 

c  If  there  be  no  other  means  of  saving  the  hills,  I 
will  bid  over  their  heads,'  Othyris  said  to  himself. 

So  long  as  the  contract  with  the  Corporation  was 
not  signed,  so  long  as  the  shares  were  not  on  the 
market,  he  thought  it  might  be  possible  to  prevent 


xvn  HELIANTHUS  285 

the  barter  of  this  portion  of  the  Helianthine  coast 
to  foreign  speculators. 

His  agents  and  his  advisers  were  not  of  his 
opinion  ;  the  King,  the  Financier,  and  the  Munici- 
pality offered  to  their  eyes  an  invincible  trio,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  Ministers  of  the  Treasury  and  of 
Public  Works,  who  were  greatly  in  favour  of  the 
project.  Othyris  listened  to  their  arguments,  but 
was  not  greatly  impressed  by  them.  It  seemed  to 
him  that  to  save  the  glory  of  Mount  Atys  and  its 
sea-washed  slopes  from  defilement,  was  an  act  which 
would  be  both  patriotic  and  aesthetic  —  a  thing  to  be 
done,  for  the  sake  of  the  country  and  the  city,  even 
were  there  no  private  interests  involved. 

He  had  little  knowledge  of  such  speculations,  of 
how  to  combat  and  to  defeat  them ;  but  experience 
had  already  shown  him  more  than  once  that  most 
questions  resolve  themselves  into  a  matter  of  money, 
and  that  the  longest  purse  is  the  strongest  combatant. 

It  was  necessary  to  act  at  once  and  as  privately  as 
possible,  for  if  his  father  intervened  with  a  formal 
veto  in  protection  of  the  foreign  speculators,  it 
would  be  difficult  for  him  as  a  prince  of  the  blood  to 
pass  over  such  a  declaration  of  the  royal  will.  He 
selected  the  most  competent  of  his  financial  adminis- 
trators, and  set  them  to  work  to  study  and  con- 
travene the  projects  of  the  foreign  Company  and  the 
intentions  of  the  men  most  prominent  in  the  matter. 
He  was  well  served  at  all  times,  for  he  was  a  generous 
and  just  master ;  the  secret  was  well-kept  and  the 
counterplans  were  well-laid.  The  amount  required 
to  oust  the  foreigners,  and  keep  Vreiheiden  neutral, 
was  very  large ;  but  not  larger  than  he  could  afford, 
for  the  wealth  he  had  inherited  from  Basil  was  very 


286  HELIANTHUS  CHAP,  xvn 

great.  Rumours  that  he  was  interfering  to  prevent 
the  sale  of  that  part  of  the  coast  were  current,  but 
they  were  vague  ;  the  City  of  Helios  was  indifferent 
who  bought,  so  long  as  a  buyer  there  was. 

The  chief  danger  of  serious  opposition   lay  with 
the  King. 


CHAPTER   XVIII 

SOME  weeks  later,  as  Othyris  drew  near  the  house  of 
Platon  Illyris  in  the  warm  afternoon,  to  his  surprise 
and  pleasure  he  saw  Ilia  come  over  the  rough  grass 
between  the  rose-bushes  to  meet  him.  She  had 
never  done  so  before.  She  seemed  in  haste,  and  her 
eyes  looked  wet  with  unfallen  tears. 

*  Oh,  sir ! '  she  cried  to  him  as  she  approached. 
f  Will  you  not  help  us  ?  Poor  Janos  is  in  great 
affliction.  The  guards  have  taken  his  son  Philemon 
to  prison  for  having  sung  the  Hymn  of  Eos  ! ' 

The  song  was  the  national  hymn  of  Helianthus ; 
an  ancient  chant  called  by  scholars  the  Hymn  of 
Eos,  and  by  the  populace  the  Song  of  Sunrise. 
Its  origin  was  lost  in  the  mist  of  ages,  but  its 
memory  was  green  in  the  hearts  of  the  people. 
Under  all  foreign  tyrannies  it  had  been  forbidden, 
but  whenever  freedom  was  regained  its  melody 
returned.  It  was  to  the  sound  of  the  Hymn  of  Eos 
that  the  War  of  Independence  had  been  fought  by 
the  soldiers  of  Illyris,  and  the  foreigner  driven  down 
into  the  sea  and  over  the  mountains.  The  grand  old 
battle-song  thrilled  through  the  veins  of  the  most 
sluggish  and  timid  Helianthine.  Theodoric  owed 
respect  to  it,  and  respected  it ;  his  son  tolerated  it ; 

287 


288  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

his  grandson  hated  it,  and  persecuted  it.  He  heard 
in  it  only  the  roar  of  revolution. 

To  the  present  King  this  national  song  was  so 
odious,  that  if,  on  driving  through  one  of  the  populous 
quarters,  he  heard  the  lilt  of  it  from  some  unknown 
singer,  working  at  leather,  or  deal,  or  cloth,  or 
sewing-machine,  within  some  unseen  attic  or  cellar, 
his  comfort  for  the  day  was  gone,  and  the  head  of 
the  secret  police  had  a  severe  worrying.  It  was  in 
deference  to  this  antipathy  on  his  part  that  the  two 
Legislative  Houses  had,  in  the  second  year  of  his 
reign,  passed  a  law  decreeing  the  singing  of  the 
patriotic  ode  illegal ;  a  misdemeanour  punishable  by 
imprisonment  varying  from  two  days  to  a  twelve- 
month. 

Now,  as  it  appears  to  be  an  axiom  in  political 
life  that,  although  governments  may  change,  the 
laws  made  by  them  must  not  do  so,  the  fine  melody 
of  the  Hymn  of  Eos  remained  a  forbidden  thing 
in  the  Code  with  fines  proportionate  in  degree.  The 
law  had  not  succeeded  in  suppressing  the  chant ;  but 
it  had  caused  much  widespread  misery,  as  the  offence 
was  almost  always  only  committed  by  young  and 
poor  men,  students,  operatives,  labourers,  peasants, 
and  even  school  children,  so  that  many  through  this 
law  began  their  lives  in  the  dock  and  the  prison. 
Those  who  condemned  the  offenders  told  them 
that  they  had  only  their  own  wicked  obstinacy  to 
thank ;  that  it  was  perfectly  easy  to  abstain  from 
singing  a  song ;  that  to  be  forbidden  to  sing  it 
involved  no  hardship  ;  that  there  were  fifty  thousand 
other  songs  on  which  no  ban  was  laid.  But  this 
kind  of  argument  has  never  availed  yet  to  move 
human  nature;  and  it  did  not  avail  in  Helianthus. 


xvm  HELIANTHUS  289 

There  was  always  some  one  chanting  somewhere  the 
forbidden  hymn,  in  field,  or  vineyard,  or  sheep-fold, 
in  garret,  or  work-yard,  or  cobbler's  den  ;  always 
some  one  to  be  brought  up  for  judgment. 

Whenever  a  Liberal  Ministry  came  into  office,  it 
was  supposed  by  the  populace  that  this  law  would 
be  repealed.  But  it  never  was  so.  The  royal  in- 
fluence was  too  strong  and  the  office-holders  too 
timid ;  and  the  Press  continued  to  record  arrests  for 
the  heinous  and  grave  offence,  just  as  when  the  re- 
actionary party  prevailed.  He  who  makes  the  songs 
of  a  nation  makes  its  history,  it  has  been  said  ;  but 
this  song,  having  been  often  one  of  the  makers  of 
the  history  of  a  nation,  was  now  considered  but  a 
gallows  bird.  The  song,  however,  was  in  the  hearts 
of  the  people,  and  rose  often  to  their  lips.  No 
petitions  were  so  often  thrown  into  the  carriage  of 
Othyris,  flung  up  to  his  balconies,  or  lifted  to  the 
level  of  his  saddle,  as  those  of  parents,  or  sisters,  or 
betrothed,  of  youngsters  who  had  been  condemned 
for  this  offence.  None  caused  him  greater  pain. 
His  position  debarred  him  from  showing  his  sympa- 
thy with  those  condemned,  and  power  to  abrogate 
their  sentences  he  did  not  possess.  When  a  pale 
and  desperate  woman  tore  her  way  through  a  throng 
and  clung  frantically  to  his  stirrup  leather  to  plead 
to  him  for  her  boy,  who  had  been  arrested  for  shout- 
ing the  revolutionary  chorus  as  he  had  walked  with 
some  comrades  through  the  vines  in  the  moonlight, 
or  had  sat  drinking  a  lemonade  at  a  tavern  door 
with  some  lads  come  out  like  himself  from  the  hell 
of  a  furnace  or  of  an  engine-room,  he  could  do  noth- 
ing for  her  ;  for  what  use  were  words  ?  The  boys 
had  broken  the  law.  The  law  was  unjust,  idiotic. 


290  Jrl^JLlAiN  1  tl(JS  CHAP. 

senseless,  cruel ;  but  it  had  become  the  law.  He, 
the  son  of  the  Defender  of  the  Law,  could  not  take 
their  part. 

'  Only  for  that ! '  he  said  now  to  Ilia.  *  Where 
was  he  ? ' 

f  On  the  shore  down  yonder,  gathering  seaweed. 
He  was  singing  the  song  as  he  worked,  thinking  no 
harm.  He  is  only  seventeen.' 

*  I  am  very  sorry.' 

'  That  is  of  little  use,  sir.  Release  him.  He  is 
so  young,  and  the  offence  is  surely  a  very  little 
one.' 

*  Release  him  ?      I  ?      Believe   me,    if  I   had  any 
power,  that  song  might  be  sung  from  end  to  end  of 
the  country.' 

*  Some  power  you  must  have.     With  you  as  with 
the  Popes  it  is  only  non  possumuj  when  you  wish.' 

1 1  have  none,  in  the  sense  which  you  suppose. 
I  cannot  interfere  in  any  matter  lying  within  the 
jurisdiction  of  the  law.' 

A  look  of  incredulity  and  contempt  passed  over 
her  face  and  wounded  him,  like  spoken  scorn  from 
one  esteemed. 

*  Sir,  you  know  as  well  as  I  do  that,  indirectly,  if 
not   immediately,  your    family   influences,  however 
and  wherever  it  chooses,  the  course  of  public  justice.' 

A  flush  rose  to  his  face  of  anger  and  mortifica- 
tion. 

f  That  is  a  very  grave  accusation,'  he  said.  ( I 
think  you  do  not  realise  how  grave  it  is.' 

f  It  is  grave,  no  doubt.  But  if  you  care  for  truth 
you  cannot  deny  it.' 

*  It  is  not  truth.     It  is  an  exaggeration,  even  if  it 
be  not  a  libel.     We  cannot,, and  do  not,  touch  the 


xvm  HELIANTHUS  291 

course  of  civil  law.  The  power  of  the  King  himself 
stops  at  the  doors  of  the  public  tribunals.' 

'  These  are  mere  phrases,'  she  said  with  contemp- 
tuous indifference  ;  '  you  would  not  use  them  to  my 
great-grandfather.' 

'  He  would  not  say  to  me  what  you  say.  Men 
keep  within  some  measure  of  moderation  in  reproach 
and  censure.' 

4 1  think  he  would  certainly  say  to  you  that  if  you 
look  into  your  conscience  you  will  see  there  that  it 
is  not  unjust.' 

c  It  is  exaggerated  ;  and  as  regards  myself  it  is 
entirely  untrue.' 

*  That  may  be.' 

Her  tone  had  a  doubt  in  it,  an  unspoken  incredu- 
lity, which  wounded  him.  He  could  not  say  on  his 
honour  that  the  privileges  of  the  Crown  were  never 
strained.  There  passed  through  his  mind  many 
memories  which  told  his  conscience  that  she  was  not 
altogether  wrong ;  memories  of  acts  with  which  he 
had  nothing  to  do,  which  he  had  possessed  no  more 
power  to  prevent  than  to  prevent  the  revolving  of 
the  moons  of  Saturn,  but  by  which  members  of  his 
family  had  turned  aside  the  course  of  public  equity 
as  an  engineer  turns  aside  the  course  of  a  stream. 
The  engineer  sits  unseen  in  his  office,  and  has  no 
weapon  but  his  pen  and  his  mathematical  instru- 
ments ;  but  it  is  by  him,  through  him,  that  the 
merry  babbling  of  the  water  through  the  flags  and 
cresses  is  arrested,  and  the  birds  on  its  banks  left 
athirst. 

He  remembered  Corvus,  who  had  been  saved 
again  and  again  from  certain  exposure  and  probable 
condemnation  in  the  tribunals,  because  he  had  been 


292  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

in  his  sovereign's  sight  a  heaven-born  Minister,  a 
kneeling  lion  holding  up  on  mighty  shoulders  the 
throne  and  all  its  pomp  and  prestige.  He  remem- 
bered a  colleague  of  Corvus,  Noevius,  who  had 
died  in  office,  heavy  with  years  and  honours  and 
riches,  though  again  and  again  the  public  voice  and 
the  public  prints  had  proved  against  him  the  appro- 
priation of  funds,  the  sale  of  places  and  contracts, 
the  most  unblushing  nepotism  and  venality  in  pat- 
ronage, the  selection  for  high  emprises  of  favoured 
incapables. 

He  remembered  the  Baron  Anthemis,  an  Aide-de- 
Camp  of  the  Crown  Prince,  who  had  killed  with  a 
sabre-thrust  a  citizen  who  had  jostled  him  on  the 
pavement  of  a  narrow  street  in  Helios,  and  who  had 
been  found  guiltless  by  the  courts,  both  civil  and 
military,  and  was  still  taking  his  ease  on  the  boule- 
vards of  the  city.  He  remembered  the  Countess 
Corianthus,  who  had  been  guilty  of  forgery  to  the 
amount  of  several  millions  of  francs,  but  who  was  a 
Lady  of  the  Bedchamber  to  Princess  Gertrude,  and 
was  never  brought  to  justice,  but  merely  endured 
an  agreeable  exile,  her  husband  being  sent  on  a 
diplomatic  mission  to  a  great  empire,  where  she 
shone  as  the  most  brilliant  of  ambassadresses.  He 
remembered  another  great  lady,  the  Duchess  Daubrio, 
who,  when  her  husband  had  been  Minister  of  War, 
had  stolen  and  sold  to  a  foreign  Power  plans  of 
mobilisation  and  fortification  —  a  despicable  betrayal 
for  which  she  had  never  been  troubled  in  any  way. 
He  remembered  Colonel  Vislauer,  commanding  a 
regiment  of  Foot  Guards,  who  had  caused  three  of 
his  men,  for  a  trifling  offence  against  discipline,  to 
be  stripped  and  stretched  face  downward  on  the 


xvm  HELIANTHUS  293 

stones  of  the  barrack-yard  whilst  he  kicked  them  in 
the  ribs  with  his  jack-boots.  No  action  of  any 
kind  was  ever  taken  against  Colonel  Vislauer  for  this 
brutal  crime,  because  he  was  an  officer  highly  esteemed 
by  the  King,  and  admired  by  the  Emperor  Julius. 

Othyris  was  powerless  to  alter  these  abuses. 
There  would  be  always  £  lictors  to  clear  the  market- 
place and  put  their  necks  beneath  the  curule  chair,' 
as  in  the  Claudian  days.  These  remembrances,  and 
others  like  them,  thronged  on  his  mind  under  the 
sting  of  her  words. 

Direct,  avowed,  conspicuous  interference  there  was 
none ;  but  indirect  influence  there  was  continually, 
acting  like  that  atmospheric  pressure  which  is  at  once 
invisible  and  irresistible. 

She  saw  that  he  was  humiliated  and  distressed,  but 
she  was  not  moved  to  pity. 

f  Why,'  she  said,  f  why,  sir,  should  it  be  only  the 
worthless  and  the  exalted  who  are  so  protected  ? 
Why  will  you  not  help  Philemon  ? ' 

c  I  have  told  you — I  have  no  power,'  said  Othyris 
with  anger  and  impatience  of  her  unkindness. 
'  Your  poor  lad  Philemon  is  not  a  dishonest  Minister, 
or  a  military  favourite,  or  a  Court  beauty,  that  he 
should  be  saved  from  an  unpleasant  punishment, 
nor  am  I  one  of  those  who  can  stop  the  law  in  its 
strides.  Were  it  known  that  I  felt  any  interest  in 
the  son  of  Janos  it  would  do  him  far  more  harm 
than  good.' 

*  Why  ? '  she  asked,  incredulous. 

'  Because  I  am  a  "  suspect "  myself,'  said  Othyris, 
with  irritation.  (  Every  action  of  mine  is  subject  to 
suspicion.  By  my  family  I  am  considered  a  Philippe 
Egalite  in  embryo.' 


294  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

'  Egalite  lived  and  died  basely.' 

c  I  do  not  think  my  life  is  base  ;  my  death  cer- 
tainly shall  not  be.' 

f  You  cannot  tell.' 

*  Oh,  pardon  me ;  so  much  at  least  any  human 
being  may  be  sure  of;  he  cannot  know  what  death 
he  will  meet,  but  he  can  know  in  what  temper  he 
will  meet  it.' 

f  Whilst  you  philosophise,  Philemon,  poor  child, 
is  in  prison.' 

1  You  are  very  harsh  to  me.' 

c  Why  should  I  not  be  ?  You  have  everything  the 
world  can  give.  You  do  not  need  any  indulgence.' 

'Do  you  think  material  possessions  can  compensate 
for  the  unrest  of  the  mind,  for  the  captivity  of  the 
spirit  ? ' 

f  I  can  understand  that  to  some  temperaments  they 
do  not  compensate  ;  but  your  sorrows  seem  fictitious 
to  me,  beside  the  reality  of  the  woes  that  I  have 
seen.' 

At  that  moment  the  peasant  Janos  rushed  through 
the  olive  trees,  and  fell  at  the  feet  of  Othyris ;  he 
was  a  rude,  wild,  hairy  figure,  with  great  black  eyes, 
now  burning  with  pain  and  wet  with  tears  ;  his  breast 
was  bare  ;  his  skin  was  bronzed  brown,  his  beard 
long  and  unkempt. 

{  My  lord,  my  lord  ! '  he  cried.  c  They  say  you 
are  one  of  those  who  reign.  Oh,  hear,  and  be 
merciful,  my  lord  !  They  have  taken  my  boy,  my 
first-born  son ;  he  was  singing  down  on  the  shore, 
as  he  filled  a  creel  with  seaweed ;  the  song  is  for- 
bidden, they  say — I  do  not  know.  How  can  singing 
a  song  be  a  crime  ?  They  have  taken  him  into  the 
city,  into  their  prison.  I  have  been  there  ;  they  will 


xvin  HELIANTHUS  295 

not  open  to  me,  nor  let  him  out.  You  who  are 
great,  and  full  of  power,  make  them  open.  Give 
me  back  my  boy.' 

Othyris  was  profoundly  affected. 

*  Get  up,  good  man,'  he  said  with  gentleness.     *  I 
am  grieved ;   but,  alas  !    I  am  as  powerless  as  you 
are.' 

'  Set  him  free  ;  set  him  free,'  cried  Janos,  who  did 
not  rise,  but  kept  his  brown  toil-worn  hands  clasped 
round  the  knees  of  the  man  whom  he  believed  was 
omnipotent.  *  He  was  sixteen  last  day  of  all  the 
Saints.  Only  sixteen,  my  lord !  a  little  lad  who 
should  be  at  play,  and  he  works  like  an  ox  at  the 
mill,  to  aid  me,  and  get  bread  for  his  brothers.  Only 
singing  a  song  !  — God  in  Heaven  !  the  same  old  song 
that  was  sung  by  the  men  who  followed  the  Great 
Man  when  he  drove  the  strangers  into  the  sea.' 

His  hands  relaxed  their  hold,  he  rolled  upon  the 
turf  in  the  hysterical  anguish  of  the  southern  peasant, 
tearing  madly  at  his  matted  auburn  hair,  shrieking 
like  a  butchered  ram  whose  throat  is  gashed  by  the 
knife. 

*  You  might  have  spared  me  this,'  said  Othyris  to 
Ilia  Illyris.     c  Believe  me,  I  need  no  pressure.' 

*  I  did  not  know  that  he  was  near.' 

She  bent  over  the  writhing  body  of  the  peasant. 

4  Janos,  arise,'  she  said  as  she  touched  his  shoulder. 
4  You  can  hear  me  ?  You  hurt  yourself  and  me,  my 
friend.  The  Duke  of  Othyris  is  sorry  for  you  and 
for  the  boy.' 

Janos  was  calmed  by  her  touch  and  her  voice,  as 
an  infuriated  animal  is  touched  by  those  of  one  whom 
he  loves  and  is  accustomed  to  obey.  He  did  not 
rise  from  the  ground,  but  he  ceased  to  rave,  and 


296  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

writhe,  and  tear  his  hair  and  beard ;  he  lay  face 
downward  on  the  grass,  trembling  and  sobbing  bit- 
terly. Othyris  stood  near  him,  moved  to  a  great 
and  painful  pity. 

To  those  who  are  accustomed,  by  breeding  and 
through  pride,  to  restrain  in  themselves  the  outward 
expression  of  all  emotion,  a  violent  and  ungoverned 
display  of  strong  feeling  always  appears  to  the  heart- 
less indecent,  to  the  merciful  most  piteous.  Unveiled 
emotion  always  appears  an  offence  to  those  accus- 
tomed to  the  restraints  of  a  polished  society. 

*  I  feel  wholly  with  you,  Janos,'  he  said.  '  Rise, 
my  poor  man,  and  take  courage.  If  there  be  any 
way  in  which  I  can  help  you  I  will  take  it.  Are  you 
sure  your  son  went  quietly  with  the  town  guards  ? 
If  he  struggled ' 

f  No  doubt  he  struggled.  No  doubt  he  rebelled. 
He  is  a  youth  with  a  man's  heart/  said  Ilia  Illyris 
with  some  disdain.  <  Do  not  even  the  timid  fawn  and 
sheep  rebel,  when  they  are  being  dragged  to  the 
shambles  ? ' 

Janos  staggered  up  to  his  feet. 

'  Did  he  rebel  ?  I  know  not,  my  lord.  No  one 
was  there.  As  they  passed  through  the  city  gate  he 
saw  Damon,  the  son  of  Orestes,  who  is  a  comrade  of 
his,  and  he  cried  aloud  to  him  of  what  had  chanced. 
"  Tell  father,"  he  cried,  "  tell  father  they  take  me  to 
prison  for  singing  the  Song  of  Sunrise,"  and  Damon, 
the  son  of  Orestes,  came  up  hither  to  me,  fast  as  a 
dog  may  run,  and  he  said :  "  They  are  taking  him 
down  to  the  city  prison.  Philemon  will  not  sleep  at 
home  to-night,  nor  many  nights  to  come."  And 
that  is  all  that  Damon,  the  son  of  Orestes,  knew, 
and  all  that  I  know.' 


xvin  HELIANTHUS  297 

Then  he  threw  up  his  arms  to  heaven,  and  wailed 
aloud;  a  dark,  wild,  most  sorrowful,  most  terrible 
figure,  standing  in  the  clear  green  sunlight  beneath 
the  trees. 

f  I  will  do  what  I  can,'  said  Othyris. 

'Go,  Janos,'  said  Ilia.  '  You  hear  what  hope  is 
given  you.  I  will  come  and  speak  with  your  wife 
before  the  sun  is  down.' 

'  Will  he  be  back  this  night  ? '  said  Janos,  the 
great  sobs  breaking  his  words. 

'  There  is  no  hope  of  that,  my  poor  friend,'  said 
Othyris.  c  The  law  is  quick  to  take,  and  very  slow 
to  loose.' 

'  When — when —  '  gasped  Janos  ; £  when,  oh  my 
lord  ? ' 

*  I  cannot  tell ;  I  can  promise  nothing.  I  possess 
no  power.  But  what  I  can  I  will  do.  Go  now. 
You  will  hear  from  me.' 

The  accent  of  authority,  which  was  natural  to 
Othyris  when  wearied  or  opposed,  asserted  itself 
through  the  kindness  and  compassion  of  his  tone. 
It  cowed  and  silenced  the  peasant ;  he  ceased  to  im- 
portune, he  tried  to  restrain  his  grief;  he  ceased  to 
wail  and  scream  ;  with  despair  upon  his  face  he  slunk 
away  between  the  great  trunks  of  the  olives ;  he  did 
not  dare  even  to  pray  any  more. 

(  He  is  a  poor  rude  creature,  sir,'  said  Ilia.  (  He 
is  not  a  courtier! ' 

'  He  is  distraught,'  said  Othyris;  'and  you,  lady, 
are  unkind.' 

The  colour  rose  into  her  cheeks. 

4 1  was  wrong,'  she  said  ;  *  I  should  have  thanked 
you.  You  were  good  to  him.' 

Othyris  bowed  to  her,  and  took  his  leave  in  silence. 


298  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

He  was  wounded  by  what  seemed  to  him  her  injus- 
tice and  unkindness. 

Ilia  remained  out  of  doors  by  that  old  well  where 
she  had  spoken  with  him  ;  she  sat  down  upon  its 
marble  ledge,  which  was  broad  and  solid  as  a  bench 
and  carved  with  the  acanthus  leaf  so  dear  to  classic 
stone-workers.  She  was  vaguely  startled  by  the  in- 
fluence which  she  dimly  perceived  that  she  possessed 
over  Othyris.  Some  slight  comprehension  of  the 
intense  restraint  which  he  must  put  upon  himself  to 
submit  to  her  disregard  of  all  the  formalities  and 
deference  to  which  he  was  by  habit  accustomed,  and 
by  his  birth  entitled,  dawned  on  her ;  and  for  the 
first  time  she  asked  herself  why  he  did  so.  Was  it 
not,  she  thought,  because  he  was  sincerely  weary  of 
the  conventionalities  and  hypocrisies  of  etiquette  ? 

This  explanation  seemed  to  her  simple  and  natural; 
and  she  could  not,  from  her  ignorance  of  the  world, 
measure  in  any  degree  the  vast  power  which  she 
must  exercise  over  him  to  make  him  subdued  to 
such  renunciation  of  his  claims  to  respect,  such  sub- 
mission to  her  continual  ironies  and  censure,  her 
complete  indifference  to  his  rank.  But  for  the  first 
time,  that  morning,  some  perception  of  all  which  she 
ignored,  and  which  he  renounced,  dawned  on  her ; 
and  the  dignity  and  forbearance  of  his  attitude  under 
the  provocation  which  she  perpetually  gave,  claimed 
her  admiration  and  moved  her  to  a  certain  penitence. 
Birth,  and  the  whimsical  caprices  of  men,  gave  him 
the  authority  and  the  rank  he  held ;  it  was  the  fault 
of  the  world,  not  of  himself. 

She  sat  under  the  olives,  whilst  the  swallows  flew 
to  and  from  their  nests  under  the  eaves  of  her  house, 
and  a  greater  sympathy  stirred  in  her  towards  the 


xvin  HELIANTHUS  299 

son  of  the  King  than  she  had  ever  felt  before.  He 
was  to  her  only  Elim  of  Gunderb'de,  but  to  all  the 
world  he  was  one  of  the  Princes  of  Helianthus,  be- 
fore whose  coming  crowds  acclaimed,  and  trumpets 
sounded,  and  sentinels  saluted,  and  in  whom  all  the 
servility  of  the  human  race  recognised  un  grand  de  le 
terre. 

*  Ilia  ! '  called  the  voice  of  Platon  Illyris  from  the 
study  window. 

She  rose  and  went. 

c  So  they  have  taken  the  son  of  Janos  to  their 
prison  because  he  sang  the  Song  of  Eos  ! '  said  Illyris 
as  she  entered.  *  Heavens  and  Earth  !  But  for  that 
hymn  what  were  the  country  to-day  ?  A  geographical 
expression  !  A  loose  shaft  of  arrows  that  any  hand 
could  break  !  Ah,  child,  if  you  had  heard  the  people 
sing  that  song  in  the  days  of  my  youth  !  It  roused 
them  as  one  man  from  the  mountains  to  the  sea. 
We  who  were  scholars  called  it  the  Hymn  of  Eos ; 
but  the  people  called  it  the  Song  of  Sunrise.  It  is 
so  old,  so  old,  that  mighty  hymn.  Men  say  it  was 
written  by  Pindar.  That  is  mere  conjecture.  But 
what  is  sure  is  that  its  strophes  were  sung  when 
the  armies  of  the  Medes  and  Persians  were  driven 
out  of  Helianthus,  and  the  tyranny  of  the  Asiatics 
ended  then  and  for  ever.' 

The  Song  of  Eos  ! 

Across  the  long  dark  space  of  joyless  years  Illyris 
saw  the  rosy  morns  and  golden  eves  of  his  early 
manhood,  when  he,  and  the  brothers  and  friends  of 
his  heart,  had  gone  through  the  seeding  grass  of 
summer,  or  along  the  edge  of  the  blue  sea,  chanting 
its  chorus  in  triumphant  defiance. 

The  Song  of  Eos  ! 


300  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

How  often  had  the  grandeur  of  its  strophe  and 
antistrophe  rolled  like  thunder  above  the  ranks  of 
his  young  soldiers,  urging  them  on  to  combat  and  to 
victory  as  though  the  Divine  Twins  rode  on  their 
milk-white  steeds  and  called  to  them  aloud,  as  in  the 
great  strife  of  yore. 

And  now  the  classic  battle-chant  was  a  forbidden 
thing,  an  offence,  a  misdemeanour,  a  breach  of 
common  law  ! 

Platon  Illyris  struck  his  tremulous  hand  upon  the 
wooden  arm  of  his  chair.  God  of  Battles !  For 
what  had  they  fought,  he  and  his?  For  what  had 
they  died,  all  the  brave  and  beautiful  youths  of  the 
years  of  the  liberation  ? 

O  cruel  cynic  that  men  call  Fate !  O  grinning 
satirist  that  men  call  Time. 

( If  I  had  known,  if  I  had  foreseen  this  rule  of  the 
Gunderode,'  he  muttered,  c  I  would  have  left  the 
stranger  in  the  land,  I  would  have  left  the  foreigner 
in  her  palaces,  and  the  alien  flag  on  her  towers  ;  and 
I  would  have  bought  a  sailing  vessel  and  sailed  far 
away  from  her  shores,  and  left  to  their  choice  a 
bloodless  and  spineless  people,  who,  having  achieved 
freedom,  knew  not  how  to  hold  it  in  their  nerveless 
hands ! ' 

The  land  had  been  to  him  as  a  fair  woman  enslaved 
and  fettered.  He  had  given  all  his  life  to  her  service, 
and  had  set  her  free,  and  had  put  in  her  hands  the 
golden  fruit  and  flowers  of  liberty;  and  she,  she  had 
thrown  down  the  fruit  in  the  dust,  and  had  stretched 
out  her  wrists  to  the  fetters  !  Wise  in  their  genera- 
tion had  been  the  men  who  had  never  fought,  the 
men  who  had  never  dreamed,  the  men  who  never 
pitied,  or  strove,  or  desired  ;  but  sat  in  their  dens 


xvni  HELIANTHUS  301 

like  the  spiders,  and  spun  their  webs,  and  devoured 
their  prey,  and  waxed  fat,  leaving  others  to  toil  and 
to  suffer,  and  the  great  salt  sea  of  human  tears  to 
roll  on  from  pole  to  pole! 


CHAPTER   XIX 

ON  leaving  Aquilegia,  Othyris  took  his  way  to 
the  annex  of  the  Soleia  Palace,  used  as  a  pied  a 
terre  by  Tyras,  who  happened  at  this  time  to  be 
spending  a  few  days  in  Helios.  It  was  never 
for  very  long  that  Gavroche  honoured  Helios  or 
Helianthus ;  he  was  generally  to  be  found  in  the 
pleasure  places  of  other  countries,  where  he  felt 
freer,  and  was  not  worried  by  any  obligations  to 
conduct  himself  occasionally  with  decency.  Othyris 
found  him  in  his  bath-room,  having  been  groomed 
by  his  valet  and  wrapped  in  robes  of  silken  stuffs, 
and  left,  by  his  command,  to  sleep  an  hour  or  two 
before  being  dressed  for  the  evening.  Without,  it 
was  still  a  light  and  lovely  evening,  with  the  rays  of 
the  sun  still  rising  like  an  array  of  spears  above 
the  horizon  of  the  sea. 

But  in  the  rooms  of  Tyras  all  was  shuttered  and 
perfumed  and  hot.  Tyras  had  never  looked  at  a 
sunset  in  his  life.  He  was  lying  on  his  back  on  a 
soft  couch  ;  he  was  always  tired  ;  he  was  a  Hercules 
in  his  build,  but  he  was  an  utter  wreck  in  his  con- 
stitution. At  seven-and-twenty  he  was  a  ruin, 
wholly  in  body  and  partly  in  mind. 

Othyris  looked  at  him  with  his  usual  contempt ; 

302 


CHAP,  xix  HELIANTHUS  303 

and  the  prostrate  figure  stretched  itself  with  lazy 
ennui. 

He  was  not  pleased  to  see  his  brother  enter; 
but  he  had  never  dared  to  keep  out  Othyris,  for 
whom  he  had  the  sullen  respect  and  the  unwilling 
submission  of  the  debtor  to  the  creditor. 

1  What  the  devil  can  you  want  at  this  hour  ? '  he 
muttered,  with  the  straw  of  a  strong  drink  between 
his  teeth. 

f  I  do  not  come  for  pleasure,  you  may  be  sure,' 
said  Othyris. 

1  Have  any  of  them  been  to  you  ? '  said  Gavroche, 
meaning  his  creditors. 

4  No.  You  are  not  drunk,  I  think,'  said  Elim, 
'  at  least  not  so  drunk  as  not  to  be  able  to  under- 
stand. Sit  up,  and  hear  me.' 

f  I  will  hear  you,'  said  Tyras,  f  but  damn  me  if  I 
will  sit  up.  What  is  it  you  come  to  say  ? ' 

1  Listen,  and  comprehend.  You  will  see  the 
Minister  of  Justice,  Deliornis,  at  the  Palace  to- 
night. You  must  take  him  aside,  and  tell  him 
that  the  youth  whose  name  is  written  on  this  paper 
has  been  arrested  and  imprisoned  for  singing  a  for- 
bidden song ;  that  he  must  let  out  this  lad  by  such 
means  and  on  such  counts  as  he  may  judge  fittest ; 
but  that  the  boy  is  innocent  and  must  be  restored 
to  his  parents,  who  are  poor  peasants  dwelling  on 
Mount  Atys,  without  'being  marked  or  injured  for 
life  by  a  penal  sentence  or  by  a  longer  imprisonment, 
or  by  any  punishment  of  any  kind.  You  hear? ' 

'  You  want  chestnuts  taken  out  of  the  fire.  Why 
do  you  not  speak  to  Rags  yourself? ' 

c  I  never  speak  to  the  man  whom  you  call  Rags  ; 
and  any  interference  of  mine  would  only  damage 


3o4  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

this  lad ;  they  would  be  sure  he  was  an  anarchist 
and  an  atheist  if  I  tried  to  save  him.  You  are 
orthodox  and  royalist !  Certainly  your  protection 
will  be  injurious  to  him  in  another  way,  but  he  is  a 
peasant,  not  a  citizen,  and  so  that  kind  of  indecent 
calumny  will  not  hurt  him  much,  as  he  will  always 
remain  in  ignorance  of  it.' 

c  Deliornis  is  very  rough  on  all  the  revolutionary 
scum  ;  he  will  be  a  mule  to  move.' 

'  My  dear  Gavroche  !  When  a  monarchical  mule 
is  touched  by  a  prince's  whip  he  moves  at  once, 
obediently ;  indeed,  he  can  never  trot  fast  enough  ! 
Besides,  the  Minister  can  take  his  information,  and 
satisfy  his  conservative  conscience.  This  is  what 
you  have  got  to  do  ;  and  you  are  not  to  name  me 
in  the  matter.' 

Tyras  raised  his  head  from  the  cushions,  and 
looked  at  his  brother  with  glassy,  insolent,  mocking 
eyes  in  which  there  danced  a  hundred  little  devils  of 
vile  suspicions  and  lubricities  which  he  did  not  dare 
embody  in  words. 

c  There  is  the  boy's  name,'  said  Othyris,  as  he 
put  a  slip  of  paper  on  a  marble  table  beside  the  bath. 
4  Take  it  with  you  to  the  Palace,  or  you  will  forget 
the  name.  The  boy  was  arrested  on  the  seashore 
beneath  Mount  Atys  yesterday,  Thursday,  in  the 
forenoon.  Put  out  of  your  head  all  impudent  and 
unclean  suppositions.  There  is  no  place  for  them 
in  this  case.  The  youth  is  a  harmless  and  ignorant 
little  peasant.  What  he  sang  was  the  Song  of  Eos. 
That  song  may  be  very  abhorrent  to  Deliornis,  but 
it  is  written  in  the  hearts  of  the  whole  populace 
of  this  country.' 

*  And  your  motive  ;  what  is  it  ? ' 


xix  HELIANTHUS  305 

( It  is  not  one  which  you  could  understand. 
Abstract  justice  would  be  as  unintelligible  to  you  as 
is  voluntary  sobriety.' 

Gavroche  laughed  a  little,  lazily.  He  always 
appreciated  his  brother's  epigrammatic  phrases. 

4  What  will  you  give  me  ? '  he  asked.  '  Every 
affair  comes  to  that.' 

f  When  one  negotiates  with  those  who  are  pur- 
chasable, yes.  I  am  quite  prepared  to  pay  you  and 
to  pay  your  politician.  Every  favour  obtained  from 
an  incorruptible  Minister  must  be  paid  twice  over : 
to  the  intermediary,  and  to  the  incorruptible.' 

Tyras  laughed  again,  relishing  the  reply. 

f  You  amuse  me !  What  will  Deliornis  want 
beyond  the  honour  of  conversing  confidentially  with 
me  in  the  sight  of  society  ?  Nothing,  I  should  think. 
It  will  give  him  such  immense  pleasure.  I  am  a 
slightly  damaged  peach,  perhaps,  but  I  am  a  prize 
peach,  and  I  am  still  in  the  basket.' 

{ What  will  you  want?'  said  Othyris.  c  Say  at 
once.  I  must  leave  you  in  five  minutes.' 

'  Give  me  Coscyra.' 

'  I  admire  your  modesty.' 

Coscyra  was  one  of  the  finest  estates  in  the 
possession  of  Othyris. 

(  Give  me  Coscyra,'  repeated  Gavroche. 

*  No.  No  one  of  my  estates  ever  goes  out  of 
my  ownership.' 

( You  think  the  people  on  them  a  charge 
a'ames  \ ' 

c  Never  mind  what  I  think.  They  do  not  change 
hands.  What  I  will  do  if  you  get  this  poor  lad's 
freedom  is  to  have  all  the  paper  you  have  given  to 
Reuben  Muntze  bought  up  by  my  agents  and 


306  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

destroyed.     Muntze  is  the  most   dangerous  of  all 
your  Jews.' 

'  But  that  will  not  give  me  any  money  !  * 

*  No,  but  it  will  save   you  a  good  deal.     Have 
you  ever  calculated  the  interest  you  pay  all  these 
men  ? ' 

f  No  ;  it  runs  on ' 

£  Precisely.  It  does  run  on ;  and  the  longer  it 
runs  on  the  worse  for  you.  Bankrupt  princes,  my 
dear  Gavroche,  have  been  seen  in  this  world.' 

f  Yes ;  but  they  are  always  sure  of  a  good  dinner 
with  American  nouveaux  riches  \ '  said  Gavroche, 
with  a  chuckle.  ( If  Uncle  Basil  had  left  me  what 
he  left  you ' 

*  A  score  of  Basils  would  not  have  saved  you  from 
yourself.' 

Gavroche,  who  was  no  fool,  knew  that  this  was 
true ;  and  for  once  he  was  silenced. 

'  Well,'  said  Othyris,  ( do  you  accept  ? ' 
4  You  will  set  me  free  of  Muntze  altogether  ? ' 
c  I  will  set  you  free  of  all  your  existing  obligations 
to  him.      I  dare  say  you  will  try  to  make  others  to- 
morrow.    But  I  shall  hope  to  prevent  that.' 

Tyras  hesitated ;  he  would  have  preferred  money 
down ;  but  Muntze  was  the  most  intrusive,  the 
most  ill-bred,  the  most  odious  of  all  his  creditors. 
He  had  got  the  money-lender  made  a  baron,  and 
decorated ;  but  Muntze  was  always  importuning 
and  never  satisfied ;  he  was  always  wanting  unattain- 
able things  :  election  to  patrician  clubs  inexorably 
shut  in  his  face ;  entrance  to  houses  where  the  hall- 
porters  would  have  closed  the  doors  against  him  ; 
presentations  to  men  who  would  sooner  have  sat 
down  to  dinner  with  a  sweep ;  invitations  to  race- 


xix  HELIANTHUS  307 

meetings,  to  yachting-matches,  to  the  drawing-rooms 
of  great  ladies,  to  the  dressing-rooms  of  great 
actresses.  For  Muntze  was  ambitious  of  social  suc- 
cess, and  did  not  quite  correctly  estimate  social  require- 
ments ;  was  loud  in  his  dress,  profuse  in  his  jewellery, 
self-assertive  in  his  manners,  and  had  not  the  humility 
and  amiability  which  alone  can  excuse  the  pretensions 
of  the  novus  homo  to  be  received  in  high  places ;  he 
did  not  even  know  how  to  lose  at  cards  to  his  social 
superiors  with  tact.  There  was  no  doubt,  thought 
Tyras,  he  was  the  most  painful  kind  of  creditor  under 
the  sun. 

£  I  accept,'  he  said  sullenly.  '  Will  you  put  it 
in  writing  ? ' 

'  No,  I  will  not,'  replied  Othyris.  '  When  the 
young  man  is  given  back  to  his  parents,  I  will  do 
what  I  have  said.  You  know  me.' 

1  Au  revoir,  done ;  ce  soir  chez  Papa,'  said  Tyras, 
perceiving  that  he  could  make  no  better  terms. 

His  brother  knew  that  he  would  do  his  best  to 
get  the  release  of  Philemon  from  Deliornis,  for 
Gavroche,  when  he  had  his  own  interests  to  serve, 
and  his  brain  was  clear  of  alcohol,  was  an  exceedingly 
intelligent  and  acute  negotiator. 

Left  alone,  he  now  finished  his  iced  drink  agree- 
ably to  himself,  and  turned  the  matter  with  which 
he  was  entrusted  over  in  his  mind.  Gavroche  when 
he  liked  could  be  an  enjoleur ;  he  had  when  he  chose 
a  fascination  in  his  drowsy  regard,  and  in  the  slight, 
mocking  smile  of  his  thin  lips,  which  bewildered 
many,  attracted  many,  and  dominated  not  a  few, 
though  some,  and  those  timid  women  and  honest 
men,  shrank  from  it. 

The  generosity  of  Othyris  did  not  cause  him  any 


308  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

surprise,  because  he  was  used  to  such  liberality  ;  but 
he  thought  that  his  brother  must  set  great  store  on 
this  youth  for  some  reason  unrevealed.  There  were 
hundreds  of  men  and  boys  arrested  every  year  for 
singing  that  song.  Why  did  one  out  of  the  many 
interest  Elim  so  greatly  ?  That,  however,  he  re- 
flected, would  not  be  difficult  to  discover,  for  here 
was  the  boy's  name,  Philemon,  son  of  Janos  Odiskia, 
who  was  a  labourer  in  the  olive  woods  of  Aquilegia, 
a  district  of  the  Helichrysum  hills.  Though  Tyras 
habitually  drenched  his  brains  with  brandy,  he  was 
shrewd,  and  did  not  make  the  mistake  of  judging 
others  by  himself.  He  did  not  suspect  that  anything 
disreputable  was  the  cause  of  his  brother's  action, 
but  he  reasoned  that  the  motive  must  be  strong, 
exceedingly  strong. 

'  I  will  get  over  Deliornis,  and  then  I  will  find  it 
all  out,'  he  said  to  himself.  He  liked  finding  out 
what  was  concealed,  and  was  clever  at  it,  when  his 
indolence,  and  his  caprice,  and  his  inconstancy,  did 
not  make  him  weary  of  a  chase  before  he  had  got 
fairly  on  the  scent  in  it.  The  same  thing  never 
attracted  or  occupied  him  for  long ;  not  even  his 
own  interests. 

f  You  would  have  had  more  power  than  any  of  us 
if  you  had  not  burned  up  your  brains  with  brandy 
and  impaired  your  volition  with  morphine,'  Othyris 
had  said  to  him  one  day. 

f  The  river  would  be  dry  land  if  it  were  not 
water,'  said  Tyras.  c  Have  you  nothing  more  novel 
to  say  than  that  ?  A  patron  once  told  me  in  Paris 
that  all  his  workmen  died  before  thirty-five  of  drink 
of  some  sort.  Why  should  I  be  more  virtuous  than 
a  man  in  a  blouse  ? ' 


xix  HELIANTHUS  309 

1  There  are  a  great  many  reasons  with  which  I 
will  not  trouble  you,  because  they  would  not  weigh 
with  you.' 

(  And  there  are  a  great  many  reasons  with  which 
they  would  trouble  me,  if  I  were  not  irreclaimable. 
The  King  sent  me  a  tour  in  the  northern  provinces 
when  you  were  in  Asia  —  oh-he  !  I  promise  you  he 
won't  send  me  on  another.' 

He  laughed  his  short,  weak,  sardonic  laugh  of 
which  diseased  lungs  were  the  feeble  bellows,  but 
which  had  a  faint,  far-off  echo  of  childish  mirth  in 
it  which  made  his  brother's  heart  ache,  recalling 
other  days. 

Gavroche  had  not  been  mistaken  when  he  had 
counted  securely  on  the  complacency  and  compliance 
of  the  Minister  in  such  a  small  matter  as  the  arrest 
of  a  poor  peasant.  Deliornis  would  have  opened 
wide  the  door  of  the  fullest  penitentiary  in  Helianthus 
to  enjoy  that  delightful  quarter  of  an  hour  in  which 
the  Prince  of  Tyras  sat  beside  him  in  a  recess,  put- 
ting his  hand  familiarly  on  his  shoulder  and  saying, 
c  Voyez  donC)  mon  cher'  To  be  called  '  mon  cher '  by 
a  prince  of  the  blood,  Deliornis  would  cheerfully  have 
passed  a  decree  declaring  that  all  prisons  of  every 
kind  should  be  abolished  !  Kantakuzene  stiffened 
his  back  sometimes  ;  Deliornis  never.  The  former 
had  the  irritating  qualities  of  a  man  who  has  studied 
back  history  and  his  contemporaries ;  the  latter  had 
that  delightful  inferiority  which  comes  from  the  total 
absence  of  early  education.  Kantakuzene  occasionally 
was  overborne  by  his  own  intellect  into  showing  that 
he  did  not  greatly  estimate  that  of  royal  personages  ; 
Deliornis  never  showed  this,  because  he  never  felt  it, 
—  never  felt  anything  in  the  presence  of  his  monarch 


3  io  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

except   the    humility  and    the    timidity   which    the 
tradesman  feels  before  a  patrician  customer. 

Deliornis  attributed  the  worst  motives  possible  to 
his  prince's  interest  in  the  young  peasant,  but  that 
did  not  prevent  him  from  obeying  the  wishes  of 
Tyras.  He  would  have  trodden  on  all  laws  and 
all  justice  if  any  one  of  the  royal  family  had  desired 
it ;  and  he  consented  as  readily  to  set  the  lad  free 
without  examination  of  the  charge  made  against  him, 
as  he  would  have  consented  to  put  him  in  prison 
without  any  charge  at  all  if  invited  to  do  so  by  the 
same  personage. 

Of  necessity,  he  said  that  the  law  must  take  its 
course  ;  that  his  personal  interference  with  a  question 
of  the  police  was  utterly  out  of  the  question  ;  that  no 
personal  pressure  could  ever  be  exercised,  etc.,  etc. ; 
and  with  equal  discretion  Gavroche  assured  him  that 
he  would  never  dream  of  his  going  out  of  the  proper 
course  of  ministerial  etiquette  to  oblige  himself ;  that 
all  he  asked  was  clemency  for  the  offence,  if  offence 
there  were.  But  each  of  them  knew  very  well,  when 
their  conversation  ended,  that  Philemon,  son  of  Janos, 
would  be  outside  the  gates  of  the  gaol  on  the  morrow, 
simply  because  the  Prince  of  Tyras  wished  it.  ( Au 
bon  entendeur  salut ! ' 

That  evening  the  fastidious  people,  who  could  not 
see  in  a  rag-merchant  a  heaven-born  statesman,  ob- 
served with  disapproval  and  curiosity  that  the  Prince 
of  Tyras,  who  was  quite  sober,  looked  like  a  gentle- 
man, and  wore  that  air  of  amiable  condescension  which 
he  could  put  on  when  he  liked,  conversed  long  and 
seriously  with  Deliornis  in  a  flower-filled  alcove  of 
one  of  the  least  frequented  of  the  Palace  drawing- 
rooms.  No  one  could  hear  what  passed,  but  the  long 


xix  HELIANTHUS  311 

conversation  gave  rise  to  many  comments  and  con- 
jectures on  the  part  of  the  guests  of  the  Court. 

On  the  morrow  Othyris  received  a  note  signed 
1  Gavroche  ' :  — 

f  //  was  all  a  mistake  of  the  Carabineers.  The  usual 
fault :  too  much  zeal  in  the  public  service.  So  touching  ! 
The  youth,  not  later  than  to-morrow,  will  be  restored  to 
the  bosom  of  his  family,  with  compensation.  Now  rid 
me  of  Reuben. y 

Greatly  to  the  chagrin  of  Baron  Muntze  all  the 
signatures  of  the  Prince  of  Tyras  were  withdrawn 
from  his  hold,  the  amounts  for  which  they  had  been 
given  being  paid  to  him  with  full  interest.  A  caution 
was  at  the  same  time  conveyed  to  him  that  if  he  lent 
again  to  the  Prince  of  Tyras  he  would  be  likely  to 
get  into  trouble  in  high  places. 

*  Damn  me,  I  ought  not  to  spy  on  Elim  after  that ! ' 
thought  Gavroche,  in  an  emotion  of  genuine  gratitude 
to  his  brother  ;  and  the  mystery  of  his  brother's 
interest  in  the  youth  who  had  been  arrested  was 
left  unpenetrated  by  him  for  the  moment,  through 
one  of  those  intermittent  impulses  of  honour  which 
now  and  then  illumined  the  sodden  darkness  of  his 
soul. 


CHAPTER  XX 

ON  the  following  day,  towards  sunset,  the  boy 
Philemon  stood  again  on  the  mud  floor  of  the  little 
home  so  dear  to  him ;  he  was  embraced,  kissed,  wept 
over,  received  as  one  risen  from  the  dead. 

What  had  happened  to  him  ?  He  knew  no  more 
than  a  young  dog  why  he  had  been  seized  and 
chained  up,  then  unchained  and  let  loose. 

*  They  took  me,'  he  said  to  his  parents,  when  their 
clamours  and  caresses  grew  a  little  quieter.  f  They 
came  down  on  the  beach  and  said  I  was  singing  the 
song ;  yes,  I  was  singing  the  song  as  I  raked  up  the 
weed.  They  used  me  roughly  and  swore  at  me. 
They  tied  my  arms  behind  me.  They  took  me  down 
to  a  guard-house  by  the  Gate  of  Olives  ;  and,  when  it 
was  dark,  to  that  gaol  which  stands  by  the  church  of 
Our  Lady  of  Tears,  the  gaol  that  is  all  black  and 
dreadful,  and  they  put  me  in  a  stone  cell,  and  there 
was  no  light ;  I  was  frightened.  I  screamed.  Two 
guards  came  in  and  beat  me,  and  they  chained  me 
to  the  floor.  I  had  had  nothing  to  eat.  They 
brought  me  some  water,  but  they  held  it  in  a  pail  to 
my  mouth  to  drink,  and  most  of  it  was  spilled  over. 
They  left  me  some  bread,  but  I  could  not  eat.  They 
left  me  alone  a  long,  long  time.  They  came  in  hours 
and  hours  after  ;  I  suppose  it  was  night ;  it  was  all 

312 


CHAP,  xx  HELIANTHUS  313 

dark.  They  had  lanterns.  "Ah,  you  are  dainty, 
are  you,  gallows  bird  ?  "  they  said  when  they  saw  the 
bread  uneaten  ;  and  they  kicked  and  cuffed  me. 
Then  they  went  out  and  left  me  in  the  dark.  I  do 
not  know  how  long  it  was  before  they  came  again. 
They  took  me  out  in  the  morning  light.  There  was 
bright  full  sun  in  the  passages.  My  head  swam. 
They  took  me  to  a  man  sitting  at  a  desk,  all  buttoned 
up,  with  epaulettes  on  his  shoulders.  He  said  to  me, 
"  You  may  go.  It  was  a  mistake."  And  he  wrote 
in  a  big  book.  "  Take  him  outside  and  let  him  go," 
he  said  to  the  guards.  "  Here,  you  boy,  say  nothing; 
say  only  it  was  a  mistake."  And  he  gave  me  three 
gold  pieces.  Here  they  are.' 

His  mother  and  brothers  and  sisters  crowded  to 
look  ;  they  had  never  seen  gold.  But  his  father 
said  :  — 

c  You  should  not  have  taken  them.  They  had 
beaten  you.  Why  did  you  take  their  money  ?  Give 
them  to  me.  I  will  ask  the  Great  Man.' 

So  he  always  called  Platon  Illyris.  Philemon  gave 
them. 

*  I  took  them  because  I  was  afraid.  I  shall  always 
be  afraid ' 

His  voice  was  very  low,  his  eyes  were  haggard, 
his  limbs  trembled  with  fever.  His  youth  had  gone 
out  of  him  ;  it  was  unlikely  that  it  would  ever  return. 
Beat  a  young  dog  brutally,  he  will  never  be  the  same 
dog  again. 

Janos  went  up  to  the  house  of  Illyris  ;  they  already 
knew  of  the  boy's  arrival.  When  he  had  told  his 
son's  story,  he  showed  the  gold  which  he  held  in  his 
hand. 

c  Sir,'  he  said  to  Illyris, '  the  Master  of  the  gaol 


3i4  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

gave  Philemon  these  three  pieces.  Should  he  keep 
them  ? ' 

f  No/  said  Illyris.     c  Give  them  to  me.' 

Janos  gave  them. 

'  Child,  bring  me  the  little  coffer/  said  Illyris. 

Ilia  brought  it ;  a  small  and  rusty  box  of  iron, 
very  strong,  found  many  years  before  in  the  earth 
beneath  the  roots  of  an  olive-tree  blown  down  in  a 
storm ;  it  was  probably  many  centuries  old. 

Illyris  opened  it,  took  out  three  pieces  of  the  same 
value,  and  gave  them  to  Janos,  taking  those  of  the 
gaol  in  their  stead. 

Then  at  his  table  he  wrote  in  his  fine  bold  char- 
acters, a  little  tremulous  from  age :  — 

(  If  these  three  gold  •pieces  are  intended  as  the  measure 
of  your  equity  they  are  too  much :  if  they  are  intended 
as  the  measure  of  your  iniquity  they  are  too  little? 

Then  he  signed  his  name,  Platon  Illyris,  put  the 
paper  and  the  coins  under  cover,  and  sealed  them. 

'  Send  Ma'ia  with  this  to  the  gaol,  and  bid  her  see 
that  they  give  it  to  the  governor/  he  said  to  Ilia. 
4  Let  her  go  the  first  thing  in  the  morning.' 

c  Is  it  the  King's  son  who  has  set  Philemon  free  ?  ' 
asked  Janos. 

c  Ay,  they  can  bind  and  loose/  said  Illyris 
bitterly. 

1  Should  we  not  thank  him,  sir?'  Ilia  said  with 
hesitation  as  Janos  went  away. 

'  Thank  whom  ? ' 

fThe  Duke  of  Othyris.  It  must  be  he  who  has 
caused  the  boy  to  be  liberated.' 

*  Doubtless.      Princes   always    say  they    have   no 


xx  HELIANTHUS  315 

power,  but  they  can  bind  and  loose,  as  I  said,  at  their 
pleasure  ! ' 

'  But  at  least  when  they  act  justly  do  they  not 
deserve  some  gratitude  like  other  men  ? ' 

*  Their  debt  to  Helianthus  is  as  wide  and  as  deep 
as  the  sea  ;  if  one  of  them  pay  a  trifle  back,  by  some 
little  act  which  costs  him  nothing,  have  the  children 
of  Helianthus    any   right  or    call   to  be  thankful  ? 
That  is  unworthy  reasoning  for  a  daughter  of  my 
race.' 

f  Might  not  Janos  go  and  watch  for  the  Prince  at 
the  gates  ? ' 

*  Who  would  open  the  gates  to  Janos  ?     You  are 
mad.' 

f  I  believe  those  gates  always  stand  open.' 

'They  may.     There  are  guards  behind  them.' 

(  But  when  Princes  do  well  should  they  not  meet 
with  gratitude  ?  Would  you  not  write  a  word  for 
Janos,  sir  ? ' 

( I  ?  Write  to  a  Gunderode !  You  are  mad, 
child.' 

c  Will  you  allow  me  to  write  ? ' 

c  I  forbid  you  most  absolutely.' 

She  did  not  disobey.  But  obedience  was  painful 
to  her.  It  seemed  to  her  that  they  must  appear 
barbarians  in  the  eyes  of  Othyris.  Sleep  did  not 
come  to  her  until  a  late  hour  of  the  night ;  she  was 
thinking  what  she  could  do  to  show  that  she  was  not 
insensible  to  the  act  of  the  King's  son.  Before 
the  sun  was  visible  upon  the  horizon,  and  the  mists 
were  still  heavy  and  cold  on  all  the  dark  slopes  of 
the  mountain,  she  went  into  the  woods  and  gathered 
the  bells  of  the  fritillaria  and  the  cups  of  the  narcissus 
poeticus  which  were  at  that  season  growing  thickly 


316  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

under  the  mosses  in  all  the  olive  woods,  and  fringed 
them  with  some  young  sprays  of  olives,  and  tied 
them  with  a  plaited  band  of  grass.  She  gave  them 
to  the  woman  Ma'ia  to  whom,  overnight,  had  been 
given  the  sealed  packet  for  the  governor  of  the 
gaol. 

f  When  you  are  in  the  city,'  she  said  to  the  woman, 
cgo  first  to  the  gaol  and  leave  that  packet  as  the 
Master  told  you  to  do.  Then  go  to  the  house  of  the 
Duke  of  Othyris.  It  is  in  the  Square  of  the  Dioscuri. 
The  gates  always  stand  wide  open.  It  has  great 
groups  of  date  palms  before  it.  Watch  until  you  see 
him  come  out  of  the  courtyard,  if  you  watch  all  day 
long.  Then  go  to  him,  give  him  these  wild  flowers, 
and  say,  "  She  with  whom  I  live  thanks  you."  Only 
those  words.  No  others.' 

The  woman  repeated  the  words  three  times  to 
make  sure  of  her  remembrance  of  them  ;  then  went 
on  her  way  through  the  trees.  She  was  a  grave, 
worn,  strong  woman ;  she  had  seen  many  troubles 
in  her  life,  and  had  neither  curiosity  nor  garrulous- 
ness.  Seven  hours  passed  before  she  returned. 

Ilia  went  and  sat  down  and  waited  for  her,  where 
the  water  tumbled  down  over  the  rocks  and  a  turn 
in  the  hill-path  showed  the  shining  sea  and  the  distant 
and  glittering  domes  of  the  city. 

She  was  disturbed,  and  the  natural  repose  of  her 
temperament  was  broken  by  a  vague  anxiety  and 
unrest.  Perhaps  she  had  done  wrong  ?  she  asked 
herself. 

The  dark  figure  of  Ma'ia  came  in  sight,  black  in 
the  white  light ;  erect,  although  not  young,  she 
carried  on  her  head  a  burden  of  useful  necessary 
articles  which  she  had  bought  in  the  city. 


xx  HELIANTHUS  317 

'  You  saw  him  ? '  asked  Ilia,  as  she  rose  and  went 
to  meet  her  messenger. 

*  I  saw  him/  the  woman  answered. 

c  What  passed  ? ' 

'That  which  you  commanded  should  pass.  I 
waited  long.  The  young  man  came  out  of  his 
palace.  I  made  a  sign  to  him.  He  knew  me.  He 
beckoned  me  to  him.  I  said  to  him,  "  She  whom  I 
serve  thanks  you."  His  face  grew  bright.  He  took 
the  flowers,  and  he  turned  back  and  went  within. 
He  would  have  given  me  money,  but  I  put  it  away. 
It  was  all  done  in  a  moment.  There  were  many 
people  staring,  and  the  guards  of  the  street  looked 
angry.' 

'  You  did  well,'  said  Ilia.  (  Good  Mai'a,  go  in  and 
take  your  rest.' 

Ilia  remained  there  alone,  looking  down  through 
the  radiance  of  the  noonday  light,  outward  to  the  sea 
with  its  wide  semicircle  of  golden  coast  and  purple 
mountain. 

f  I  must  say  what  I  have  done,'  she  thought. 

There  was  no  sound  in  the  still  noontide,  except 
that  of  a  woodpecker  striking  his  beak  on  the  trunk 
of  an  oak.  The  silence  and  the  radiance  of  the  early 
spring  day  were  like  a  benediction.  She  rose  with 
regret  as  the  Ave  Maria  rang  far  down  below,  and 
she  retraced  her  steps  to  the  house. 

She  entered  the  presence  of  Illyris. 

f  Sir,'  she  said,  c  you  will  be  angered,  but  I  sent 
word  by  a  message,  by  Mai'a,  that  I  thanked  the  son 
of  the  King  for  the  freedom  of  Philemon.' 

The  face  of  Illyris  grew  very  dark,  like  a  storm 
which  lowers  in  the  hills. 

'  I   have  suffered  many  things,'  he  said  harshly ; 


3i8  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

c  but  never  before  in  my  long  life  have  I  been  dis- 
obeyed.' 

'  Never  have  I  dared  to  disobey  you  before,'  said 
Ilia  ;  '  but  I  could  not  let  a  Gunderode  believe  that 
the  Illyris  were  ingrates.' 

'  What  matter  what  a  Gunderode  may  think ! ' 
said  Illyris  with  scorn.  'You  did  wrong.  But  you 
inherit  my  temper.  I  cannot  blame  you  for  your 
heritage.' 

He  looked  at  her  with  a  keen  and  searching  gaze. 

f  This  young  man  pleases  you  ? '  he  added  with 
suspicion. 

4 1  am  sorry  for  him,  sir.' 

'  Wherefore  ? ' 

'Because  he  is,  by  nature,  just;  and  he  is  in  a 
position  wherein  he  cannot  be  just  in  action ;  he 
strives  to  do  what  good  he  can,  but  he  knows  that 
the  utmost  he  can  do  is  but  a  drop  of  clear  water  in 
a  sea  of  mud.' 

1  Whence  got  he  his  scruples  ? ' 

'  I  know  not.' 

'Is  not  he  the  son  of  Gregory's  granddaughter  by 
the  grandson  of  Theodoric  ?  What  blood  has  he 
in  his  veins  other  than  that  of  traitors  to  the  people, 
traitors  and  tyrants  ?  I  must  be  in  my  dotage  indeed 
when  my  word  ceases  to  be  law  in  my  own  house  !  ' 

( I  grieve  to  have  offended  you,  sir ;  but  I  could 
do  no  less.' 

'You  did  ill.' 

She  did  not  defend  herself.  She  too  thought  she 
had  done  wrong  in  one  sense,  although  right  in 
another. 

Illyris  was  silent,  his  eyes  resting  on  her.  She 
was  calm  and  grave,  with  no  embarrassment  under 


xx  HELIANTHUS  319 

his  scrutiny.      As  was  her  habit,  she  had  spoken  in 
simple  sincerity. 

'  You  may  go  to  your  room/  said  Illyris.  He 
turned  to  the  table  beside  him,  and  wrote  a  few  lines 
to  the  second  son  of  the  King,  the  great-grandson 
of  Theodoric :  — 

f  Young  man,  you  have  done  a  good  action  in  restor- 
ing a  child  to  his  parents,  and  in  saving  an  innocent 
from  the  pollution  of  prisons.  Tou  mean  well,  and  I 
have  no  doubt  of  your  good  faith,  but  do  not  come  here 
any  more.  Between  Gunderode  and  Illyris  there  is  a 
gulf  which  can  never  be  passed! 

Then  he  signed  and  sealed  the  letter,  and  on  the 
following  day  he  sent  it  down  to  the  palace  in  the 
Square  of  the  Dioscuri. 

To  Ilia  he  did  not  speak  of  it.  It  had  never  been 
his  habit  to  confide  in  women  or  to  consult  with 
them. 

He  trusted  their  affections,  but  he  never  trusted 
their  intelligence. 

For  the  first  time  her  future  troubled  him  with  a 
sad  sense  of  his  own  impotence.  From  want  he 
could  secure  her ;  absolute  need  she  would  never 
know  ;  but  beyond  this  he  could  not  ensure  her  peace 
or  safety.  She  was  alone ;  and  she  was  not  of  a 
temperament  to  make  friendships  easily  or  find  in- 
terests in  new  spheres.  She  had  too  much  of  the 
granite  and  the  steel  of  the  Illyris  in  her. 

Illyris  felt  that  he  had  failed  in  his  duty  in  his 
neglect  of  her ;  and  yet  what  could  he  have  done  ? 
She  had  inherited  his  strength  ;  he  could  only  leave 
her  to  herself. 


320  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

'  Will  you  live  on  here  when  I  am  dead,  Ilia  ? ' 
he  asked  her. 

f  Yes,'  she  answered,  f  always.' 

She  did  not  say,  as  others  would  have  done,  f  Do 
not  speak  of  death,'  because  she  knew  that  death 
stood  beside  his  chair  and  beside  his  bed,  and  said, 
c  I  am  near,'  every  hour  of  the  day  and  night. 
Neither  he  nor  she  used  empty  conventional  phrases. 

c  But  you  may  change  your  state/  he  said  to  her, 
'you  may  marry.' 

'That  is  not  likely,'  she  answered. 

(  Why  ?     You  are  young.' 

c  It  is  not  likely,'  she  repeated.  'It  would  not 
suit  me,  I  think.  I  wed  Aquilegia,'  she  added. 

'  Aquilegia  is  neither  yours  nor  mine.' 

4 1  put  away  little  sums  as  I  can,  and  I  hope  to 
save  enough  to  buy  it  some  day.' 

'  That  is  well.  May  Pallas  Athene  watch  over 
you  !  You  are  wiser  than  most  women.' 

The  price  of  Aquilegia,  the  house,  the  fields,  the 
olives  and  the  poplars  was  small.  It  was  but  a  hun- 
dred of  the  broad  crowns  of  Helianthus  ;  those  gold 
coins  which  had  so  deeply  offended  the  national 
feeling  of  the  people  when  they  had  been  first  issued 
bearing  the  arms  and  the  effigy  of  Theodoric. 

{ It  is  like  him,'  said  Othyris  to  himself,  when  he 
read  those  lines  from  the  hero  of  the  War  of  Inde- 
pendence. 

He  was  not  offended.  He  understood.  He  did 
not  resent  even  the  manner  of  address.  He  con- 
sidered that  Platon  Illyris  had  the  right  to  say  what- 
ever he  chose  to  any  Gunderode.  He  knew  that  it 
would  be  best  that  he  should  go  there  no  more.  But 


xx  HELIANTHUS  321 

he  looked  at  a  few  wild  wood-blossoms  set  in  an  old 
silver  goblet  on  a  table  in  his  studio,  and  thought, 
'  Whatever  betide  I  must  go  sometimes  where  those 
flowers  grew.' 

Not  yet ;  for  he  would  seem  to  the  peasants  to  go 
there  to  receive  their  guerdon  of  gratitude,  and  to 
Illyris  would  appear  to  go  in  contempt  of  the  power 
of  a  man  so  old  to  enforce  his  will. 


CHAPTER   XXI 

OTHYRIS  had  been  by  sea  to  his  estate  of  .^Enothrea, 
and  was  returning  thence  on  board  his  sailing-yacht, 
when  a  small  boat  with  a  lateen  sail  bore  down 
towards  the  royal  schooner,  and  a  man  within  it  held 
up  one  of  his  oars  in  a  gesture  of  appeal.  Othyris, 
standing  on  deck,  saw  the  signal,  and  caused  his 
yacht  to  slacken  speed  and  await  the  little  craft. 
The  fisherman  who  alone  occupied  the  boat  came  to 
the  schooner's  side  and  held  up  a  letter. 

*  Take  it  and  bring  it  hither/  commanded  Othyris  ; 
and  when  he  received  it  he  found  it  was  a  note  in  the 
cypher  which  Ednor  used  in  writing  to  him.  He 
had  the  boatmen  dismissed  with  a  handful  of  silver, 
and  went  down  into  his  cabin  to  decipher  the  message, 
which  was  very  brief.  It  told  him  that  Platon  Illyris 
had  died  on  the  previous  day,  and  that  Ednor  was 
perforce  leaving  Helios  to  avoid  arrest  for  an  article 
in  his  journal  on  the  life  and  death  of  the  hero,  for 
which  his  personal  seizure  was  now  ordered  by  the 
State.  He  had  known  that  the  yacht  was  expected 
to  return  that  day,  and  had  sent  one  of  his  fisher 
friends  to  watch  for  its  appearance  in  the  offing. 

Othyris  read  the  message  with  emotion.  The 
grave  could  not  give  more  complete  oblivion  to  that 
great  life  than  men  in  old  age  had  given  to  it;  yet  its 

322 


CHAP,  xxi  HELIANTHUS  323 

end  in  such  isolation,  in  such  ingratitude,  hurt  him. 
His  return  to  the  city  was  made  as  rapidly  as  was 
possible  ;  but  when  he  reached  the  harbour  of  the 
Soleia  it  was  noon  on  the  following  day,  and  the 
journal  conducted  by  Ednor  had  taken  the  tidings  of 
the  death  of  Illyris  amongst  the  populace  ;  the  news- 
papers of  the  noble  and  commercial  classes  did  not 
vouchsafe  a  line  to  his  memory,  nor  even  announce 
his  decease.  It  was  through  him  that  they  were 
living  there  in  peace  without  a  foreign  occupation  to 
harass  and  despoil  them,  but  it  had  long  ago  been  de- 
cided for  them  that  all  their  gratitude  was  due  alone 
to  the  now  reigning  House  of  Gunderode. 

When  Othyris  landed  he  drove  rapidly  to  his  palace, 
changed  his  yachting  clothes  for  those  of  mourning, 
and  entered  a  closed  carriage,  of  which  he  drew  down 
the  blinds.  He  took  no  one  of  his  gentlemen  with 
him.  The  horses  were  driven  by  his  order  towards 
Aquilegia.  He  had  no  clear  plan  or  definite  intention 
in  his  mind ;  his  impulse  was  to  go  to  Ilia  ;  she  was 
desolate  indeed;  probably,  he, thought,  she  would  not 
accept  any  protection  or  counsel  from  him,  but  he 
would  at  least  offer  them.  He  passed  unnoticed 
through  the  city ;  his  carriage  was  undistinguishable 
from  any  other  gentleman's  brougham,  and  he  saw 
no  signs  of  any  especial  movement  in  the  streets. 
The  dead  hero  had  belonged  to  an  almost  forgotten 
past.  The  memory  of  a  populace  is  evanescent  as 
the  dew  of  the  daybreak.  But  as  he  drew  near  the 
poor  quarters  which  led  towards  the  Gate  of  Olives, 
these  narrow,  ancient  thoroughfares  seemed  to  be 
unusually  hushed  whilstunusually  thronged  by  people. 
The  doors  and  windows  of  the  old,  lofty,  lowering 
stone  houses  were  for  the  most  part  closed,  and 


324  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

their  inhabitants  were  in  the  narrow,  paven  roads ; 
but  their  usual  noisy  cries,  and  rough  altercations, 
and  bursts  of  song,  and  shrill  oaths,  were  all  stilled ; 
the  people  were  very  quiet,  and  they  were  moving, 
as  by  one  accord,  towards  the  lofty  marble  gate, 
which  had  seen  the  passing  of  the  triumphs  and 
the  funerals  of  two  thousand  years  before.  There 
were  more  street  guards  than  usual  in  the  lanes 
and  roads  ;  they  did  not  interfere,  but  they  were 
in  threes  and  fours  together,  and  looked  sullen, 
suspicious,  ready  to  use  their  arms  on  the  first 
excuse. 

Othyris  understood  without  questioning  any  one. 
The  people  were  going  to  honour  the  dead  body  of 
Platon  Illyris  in  whatever  way  they  might  be  able 
to  do  so. 

The  news  of  the  death  of  Illyris  had  awakened  the 
dormant  memories  of  the  populace.  His  life  had 
belonged  to  a  past  generation  ;  his  memory  had  been 
faint  in  the  thoughts  of  the  living  multitudes ;  that 
he  was  near  them  in  a  still  breathing  presence  had 
never  been  realised.  But  with  one  of  those  great 
waves  of  nervous  feeling  which  move  the  multitudes 
of  men  in  cities,  as  the  ocean  is  moved  by  subter- 
ranean forces,  the  plebs  of  Helios  had  been  stirred 
by  Ednor's  article  on  the  dying  hero  into  a  sudden 
consciousness  of  its  own  ingratitude,  and  of  the  claims 
on  it  of  its  long-neglected  deliverer. 

In  the  noble  and  commercial  quarters  of  the  city 
there  was  no  agitation ;  only  annoyance  and  a  vague 
fear,  the  sense  of  an  unwelcome  ghost  arisen  and 
intrusive.  But  in  the  poor  quarters  stretching 
towards  the  west,  and  down  to  the  port,  the  awaken- 
ing was  general  and  repentant.  The  name  of  Illyris 


xxi  HELIANTHUS  325 

ran  like  a  fiery  messenger  through  the  crowds,  almost 
as  in  the  years  of  their  grandsires'  youth. 

Into  their  pale  blood,  dulled  by  the  monotony  of 
modern  toil,  some  warmth  of  an  earlier  spirit 
entered ;  into  the  heavy  hopelessness  and  sullen 
covetousness,  which  grow  together  in  the  breast  of 
the  sons  of  labour,  there  arose  some  purer,  finer 
recollection  and  desire.  It  was  far  away  from  them, 
that  epopee  of  their  grandsires,  and  the  fruits  of  its 
heroism  had  been  reaped  by  others  than  themselves, 
but  some  reflection  from  the  glow  of  its  heroism  fell 
on  them  and  illumined  the  narrow  chambers  of  their 
joyless  and  sunless  souls.  From  them  to  others  who 
felt  less,  and  who  understood  nothing,  the  electrical 
current  of  sympathy  ran  as  the  magnetism  of  evil 
or  of  good  always  flows  through  the  unconscious- 
ness of  crowds.  Thousands  and  tens  of  thousands 
were  thrilled  from  head  to  foot,  wept,  moved,  echoed, 
strove,  pressed  onward  and  upward,  scarcely  know- 
ing why,  but  crying  c  Illyris  !  Illyris  ! '  as  the  crowds 
in  all  ages  shout  Adonai  or  Barabbas,  as  the  sugges- 
tionism  of  numbers  makes  them  do.  Women  di- 
shevelled and  bare-bosomed ;  children  thrown  down, 
crushed  ;  struggling  youths  and  maidens  madly  wav- 
ing boughs  of  laurel,  as  in  the  Daphnephoria  of  old; 
the  bronzed,  half-nude  porters  and  stevedores  of  the 
quays  ;  fishers,  and  mariners,  and  boatmen  from  the 
harbours;  the  workers  from  factory,  and  engine- 
room,  and  cellar ;  the  pluckers  of  pelts,  the  makers 
of  chemicals,  the  marble-workers,  the  bird-snarers, 
the  rag-pickers,  the  sea-weed  gleaners,  the  carpet- 
weavers,  the  killers  and  cleaners  of  fish ;  all  the  in- 
numerable divisions  of  the  great,  weary,  hungry 
classes,  who  thronged  together  between  the  centre  of 


326  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

the  city  and  the  Gate  of  Olives,  in  swarms  like  the 
conies  of  the  sand  plains  ;  —  all  these  with  one  im- 
pulsion pushed  against  each  other  in  their  upward 
way,  and,  now  breaking  their  silence,  shouted  as 
with  one  voice  — 

'  To  the  Pantheon !  To  the  House  of  the 
Immortals  !  Bury  him  by  Theodoric  !  ' 

In  ever-increasing  numbers,  and  now  with  deafen- 
ing cries,  they  struggled,  like  a  shoal  of  fish  pushing 
through  a  weir,  up  the  road  which  led  towards  the 
olive  orchards  of  Aquilegia.  The  police  did  not  inter- 
fere, but  they  were  reinforced  by  detachments  of  cara- 
bineers, mounted,  with  their  arms  shining  in  the  sun. 

There  joined  the  crowd  from  other  quarters  of  the 
town  students,  artists,  artisans  of  a  higher  class,  and 
also  the  unemployed,  —  those  unemployed  by  choice, 
and  those  in  enforced  idleness  through  misadventure, 
all  the  gabies  and  all  the  loiterers  who  come  out  into 
the  streets  when  there  is  anything  to  see  or  hear  in 
them ;  but  the  multitude  remained,  in  its  vast 
majority,  essentially  of  the  populace. 

Othyris  had  got  out  of  his  carriage  before  the 
first  stragglers  had  arrived  at  the  foot  of  the  ascent 
to  Aquilegia,  and  had  taken  the  familiar  path  which 
wound  up  amongst  the  olive-trees,  —  the  precipitous 
bridal-path  which  he  had  taken  on  his  first  visit 
to  Illyris  ;  he  hoped  to  reach  the  house  before  the 
crowds  from  the  town  could  do  so.  He  was  out  of 
the  sight  of  the  throngs  who  were  still  at  the  base  of 
the  hill,  but  the  sound  of  their  shrill  outcries  reached 
him  as  he  mounted  the  mule-track  between  the  great 
trees  ;  he  could  even  distinguish  the  words,  (  To  the 
House  of  the  Immortals !  To  the  House  of  the 
Immortals  ! ' 


xxi  HELIANTHUS  327 

*  Surely/  he  thought,  '  if  any  should  lie  in  that 
House,  he  has  supreme  right  to  do  so.' 

The  atmosphere  was  glorious  with  light  and 
warmth ;  the  deep-blue  skies  seen  between  the 
boughs,  the  golden  shafts  of  sunlight,  the  shimmer- 
ing silver  of  the  vault  of  olive  leaves,  the  shining 
marble  and  jasper  and  porphyry  dust  beneath  his 
feet,  the  emerald  lizards,  the  brilliant  ruby  gladiolus, 
the  bright  gold  of  the  tansy  discs,  were  all  dazzling 
in  the  radiance  of  morning ;  but  for  once  his  soul 
was  without  response ;  he  was  harassed  by  regret,  by 
doubt,  by  apprehension. 

Would  the  noonday  pass  without  bloodshed  ? 

Would  his  father's  government  be  tolerant  of  this 
gathering  ? 

Would  the  demand  for  the  burial  be  granted  ? 

And  Ilia  Illyris  ?     What  would  she  do  ? 

The  sounds  of  the  shouting  people,  low  down  at 
the  foot  of  the  hills,  were  borne  to  his  ear  through 
the  sweet  sylvan  silence.  He  hastened  onward,  hop- 
ing to  see  her,  to  be  able  to  warn  her  in  time  to 
keep  the  bier  within  the  house,  and  thus  to  avoid 
all  which  might  appear  collusion  with  the  public 
demonstration.  But  as  the  mule-path  took  a  sharp 
narrow  bend  to  the  right,  he  saw,  on  another  curve 
above,  under  the  olives,  a  coffin  borne  on  the  shoul- 
ders of  Janos  and  of  five  labouring  men,  and  behind 
it  the  veiled  figure  of  a  woman.  His  heart  stood 
still  with  emotion.  It  was  the  figure  of  a  solitary 
mourner  coming  slowly  down  the  side  of  Mount 
Atys  with  all  that  remained  to  her  on  earth  of  rela- 
tive or  friend. 

If  she  went  downward  another  mile,  he  knew  that 
she  would  inevitably  meet  the  people  of  Helios  as 


328  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

they  ascended.  At  any  cost  of  repulse  or  offence 
he  felt  that  he  must  for  her  own  sake  arrest  her 
on  her  dangerous  path.  He  went  out  from  the 
shade  of  the  great  trees  and  with  uncovered  head 
approached  her,  raising  his  hand  in  a  gesture,  which 
made  the  bearers  of  the  dead  body  pause,  the  bier 
resting  on  their  shoulders. 

She  paused  also;  he  could  not  see  her  face,  not 
even  her  eyes,  through  the  black  gauze. 

f  Even  in  such  an  hour  as  this  ! '  she  said,  as  if  to 
herself,  in  wonder  and  repugnance ;  even  in  such  an 
hour  could  he  not  leave  her  alone  ! 

Othyris,  with  his  head  uncovered,  stood  reverently 
by  the  side  of  the  coffin. 

*  Go  back,'  he  said  to  her,  f  go  back,  I  entreat 
you.  There  are  thousands  of  people  coming  up  the 
hill.  They  come  in  all  honour  and  reverence,  but 
there  are  rough  men  and  coarse  women  amongst 
them;  many  have  come  up  from  the  docks  and  the 
lowest  quarters,  and  their  excitement  is  increasing 
every  moment.  Go  back,  whilst  there  is  time.' 

She  did  not  move ;  she  only  imperfectly  under- 
stood his  meaning ;  she  heard  the  sounds,  like  the 
swell  of  the  angry  sea,  which  came  from  the  foot  of 
the  hill,  but  she  did  not  know  that  it  was  the  mutter- 
ing of  human  voices  which  blent  with  the  familiar 
murmur  of  the  breakers  on  the  shore  below.  The 
bearers  lowered  the  coffin  gently  to  the  ground,  and 
stood,  bareheaded,  listening. 

'  Is  it  the  people  of  Helios  who  at  last  remember 
him,  do  you  say  ? '  she  said,  with  a  great  calmness  in 
her  voice.  c  It  is  late ;  too  late  ! ' 

'  It  is  too  late  indeed,'  said  Othyris  with  emotion. 

'They  cannot  hinder  his  going  to  his  last  rest. 


xxi  HELIANTHUS  329 

Let  me  pass,  sir;  I  only  take  him  to  the  graveyard 
of  the  poor.' 

£  They  would  take  him  to  the  Pantheon.' 

'  That  would  surely  be  his  right  ? ' 

'  Undoubtedly,  but  the  matter  will  not  pass  with- 
out conflict,  trouble,  perhaps  bloodshed.  The 
crowd  is  honest  and  penitent,  but  it  is  rough. 
There  will  be  scenes  unfit  for  you,  unseemly  for  his 
memory.  Go  back  to  the  house,  I  entreat  you.' 

*  Why  ?  I  do  not  fear  the  people  of  my  father's 
city.' 

(  They  will  not  harm  you  by  intention.  As  their 
mood  is  now,  they  would  die  for  you,  but  you  do 
not  know  what  a  perilous  and  inflammable  thing  is 
a  mob.  I  fear,  also,  they  will  not  be  allowed  to  re- 
turn peacefully  to  the  city.  I  mean  that  they  will 
not  be  permitted  to  bear  this  coffin  to  the  mausoleum, 
as  they  wish  to  do.  There  will  be,  I  fear,  collision 
and  conflict  between  them  and  those  in  authority.' 

'  With  your  father's  communal  guards,  with  your 
father's  troops  ? ' 

( With  the  guards  of  the  city,  with  the  troops  of 
the  State.' 

£  I  understand.  The  Gunderode  will  fear  him, 
even  dead !  They  will  find  him,  even  dead,  too 
great;  as  the  corpse  of  the  Guise  seemed  to  the 
Valois  !  Janos,  go  onward.' 

The  labourers  bent  down,  and  raised  the  coffin  to 
their  shoulders. 

1  Wait !  Wait,  for  pity's  sake,'  cried  Othyris, 
despairing  to  move  her  by  any  reasoning.  *  He  who 
lies  hidden  from  us  in  that  shell  lived  forty  years  in 
silence  and  obscurity  to  avoid  all  danger  of  strife  and 
bloodshed  which  might  have  arisen  from  the  magic 


330  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

of  his  name.  Do  not  risk  those  dangers  now  over 
his  dead  body.  He  would  bid  you  not  run  the  risk 
of  insurrection  and  military  intervention. 

{ I  do  not  speak  to  you  of  any  peril  you  yourself 
may  run,'  he  continued,  after  vainly  waiting  for  some 
answer  or  some  sign.  <I  know  that  personal  fear 
would  not  weigh  with  you  for  an  instant.  But  he 
would  be  the  first  to  stand  between  the  people  and 
their  impulses,  could  he  now  arise  from  the  dead. 
I  can  imagine  no  greater  grief  to  him  than  for  his 
name  to  become  the  cause  of  strife.' 

She  was  silent. 

On  the  lips  of  any  other  speaker  the  words  would 
have  touched  her  heart  and  convinced  her.  On  his 
they  had  a  taint  of  self-interest,  of  authority,  of  that 
menace  of  the  power  of  the  State  which  had  never 
been  heard  by  Illyris  with  tolerance  or  obedience, 
and  against  which  all  the  principles  of  those  she  had 
loved  had  been  arrayed. 

£  Lady,'  said  Othyris,  with  great  emotion  in  his 
voice,  c  no  one  ever  lived  who  had  more  reverence 
for  the  dead  than  I.  You  cannot  doubt  my  entire 
good  faith,  or  the  sincerity  of  my  counsels.  I  en- 
treat you  not  to  make  this  sacred  bier  a  cause  of  strife 
and  bloodshed,  the  beginning  of  civil  war.  I  will 
answer  to  you  and  to  the  people  of  Helios  that  the 
uttermost  shall  be  done  to  obtain  for  his  memory 
due  honour,  and  for  his  tomb  a  fitting  place.  But, 
in  his  name,  I  implore  you  not  to  lend  yourself  to 
what  will  degenerate  into  party  odium,  not  to  embit- 
ter this  solemn  hour  with  fratricidal  hatreds.  If  his 
dead  lips  could  speak,  he  would  surely  say  to  you  : 
"  Go  back,  my  daughter ;  go  back." 

She  listened  ;  her  head  drooped,  the  veil  shadow- 


xxi  HELIANTHUS  331 

ing  her  features  ;  the  accent  of  his  voice  went  to  her 
heart ;  she  felt  his  sincerity,  she  felt  his  wisdom  ;  she 
was  conscious  that  to  resist  his  counsel  was  to  be 
headstrong,  unwise,  unworthy. 

4  Take  up  the  coffin,'  she  said  to  the  men  who 
had  brought  it  there.  £  Let  us  return  to  the  house, 
and  await  nightfall.' 

They  obeyed  her  without  a  word. 

Othyris  bowed  very  low  before  her,  as  people 
bowed  to  him. 

( I  thank  you,'  he  said  humbly.  ( I  will  now  go 
and  speak  to  the  people,  and  hear  their  wishes.' 

The  bearers  and  their  sacred  burden  remounted 
the  narrow,  rocky  path  under  the  great  olives,  Ilia 
Illyris  walking  beside  them.  Othyris  descended  the 
hill  in  the  direction  of  the  ascending  mob  of  people, 
the  confused  shrill  clamour  of  whose  voices  and  the 
louder  chorus  of  the  Hymn  of  Eos  rose  upward  from 
the  lower  slopes  and  from  the  beach. 

He  was  wholly  uncertain  of  his  own  power  to  con- 
trol or  to  persuade  them ;  he  was  well  aware  that  in 
their  present  enthusiastic  and  enraged  temper  they 
might  see  in  him  only  an  enemy,  only  a  scion  of 
Theodoric  of  Gunderode.  He  could  not  tell  what 
their  mood  might  be,  or  what  reception  even  to 
ferocity  they  might  not  give  him. 

But  all  he  thought  of  was  Ilia's  safety,  and  the 
necessity  of  saving  the  city  from  insurrection.  The 
popular  temper  was  like  melenite  ;  a  spark  might 
cause  a  ruin  incalculable  and  irremediable. 

A  few  minutes  brought  him  within  sight  of  the 
earliest  stragglers  of  the  throng ;  they  recognised  his 
tall  and  slender  form  as  he  came  down  through  the 
silvery  olive  foliage. 


332  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

'  Elim  !  Elim  ! '  cried  the  foremost  men.  *  Elim  ! 
Give  him  his  rightful  place  of  burial !  Let  him  lie 
by  Theodoric ! ' 

They  pressed  forward  to  reach  the  King's  son,  who 
in  their  eyes  was  all-powerful,  in  whom  they  were 
disposed  to  trust,  but  in  whom,  nevertheless,  they 
could  not  feel  sure  that  they  had  an  ally  or  a  pro- 
tector. 

He  was  well  known  and  was  beloved  in  those  poor 
quarters  whence  came  these  throngs  of  working- 
people,  and  by  the  shore  which  sent  forth  the 
stevedores,  the  porters,  the  boatmen,  the  stokers,  the 
fishermen  ;  but  they  could  not  be  sure  how  far  they 
had  his  support  in  the  temerity  of  their  demand  on 
the  Crown. 

He  was  always  their  protector  and  friend,  but 
they  could  not  be  sure  if  they  could  rely  on  his  as- 
sistance against  his  father ;  and  of  the  King's 
antagonism  and  refusal  they  could  have  no  doubt. 

He  was  only  one  man  against  many  thousands,  but 
as  he  came  towards  them,  out  of  the  deep  shade  of 
the  trees,  he  awed  them.  In  his  serenity,  his  com- 
posure, his  simplicity,  he  appealed  to  their  respect ; 
and  by  that  difference  from  themselves  which  was  in 
him  he  forced  from  them  a  not  unwilling  admiration, 
a  vague  consciousness  of  superiority. 

He  uncovered  his  head  as  he  approached  them 
and  they  cheered  him.  They  knew  that  there  was 
great  courage  in  his  action. 

He  mounted  a  boulder  of  rock  by  the  roadside 
which  made  a  natural  rostrum  and  stood  there  a 
little  above  them.  As  far  as  they  could  be  seen  for 
the  trees  the  people  were  in  great  numbers,  and  the 
sound  of  the  footsteps  of  the  ascending  masses 


xxi  HELIANTHUS  333 

answered  the  sound  of  the  sea  dashing  angrily  on  the 
beach  far  below. 

f  My  friends,'  said  Othyris, f  you  and  I  have  come 
doubtless  on  the  same  errand,  in  the  same  feelings,  — 
honour  for  the  great  man  who  has  left  us.  What  is 
it  that  you  would  do?  What  is  it  that  you  desire? ' 

'To  take  his  body  to  the  House  of  the  Im- 
mortals,' shouted  a  hundred  speakers  ;  all  the  men 
who  were  foremost  and  nearest,  and  the  shriller  voices 
of  the  women  and  children  and  youths,  echoed  the 
cry  :  c  To  the  House  of  the  Immortals  ! ' 

c  What  were  you  about  to  do  to  obtain  your  end  ? ' 

A  clamour  of  innumerable  voices  rose  in  chorus  ; 
in  the  confusion  of  sound  he  could  distinguish  their 
threats  to  seize  the  bier  and  bear  it  through  the  city, 
and  before  the  palace  of  the  Soleia  demand  from  the 
King  the  burial  of  Illyris  beside  Theodoric.  He 
knew  that  if  they  carried  out  their  threat  his  father 
would  only  reply  by  the  bayonets  or  the  musketry  of 
his  troops.  John  of  Gunderode  would  not  parley 
with  his  populace.  It  was  a  perilous  moment ;  they 
were  in  a  perilous  mood.  When  an  idea  possesses  a 
crowd,  it  is  obstinate  with  the  obstinacy  of  the  insane. 
It  was  very  probable  that  if  Othyris  thwarted  them 
in  their  present  mood  they  would  turn  their  fury 
upon  him.  He  was  one  against  a  multitude ;  he 
was  unarmed ;  they  might  seize  him  as  a  hostage 
or  they  might  slay  him  as  a  scapegoat.  No  one 
can  ever  say  what  form  the  delirium  of  a  mass  of 
people  may  not  take. 

But  Othyris  felt  that  their  actual  mood  must  be 
dominated  or  there  would  be  bloodshed  in  Helios. 
He  raised  his  hand  to  ask  for  silence,  and  little  by 
little  the  loud  tumultuous  cries  died  down.  Swaying 


334  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

and  pressing  around  the  rock  on  which  he  stood, 
the  people  waited  to  hear  him  speak. 

(  My  friends,'  he  said  to  them,  <  your  desire  is 
natural  and  just.  Do  not  imperil  its  fulfilment  by 
violence  or  haste.  Do  not  go  upward  to  the  house 
where  he  dwelt,  for  there  are  only  women,  who 
would  be  alarmed.  First,  obtain  the  certainty  that 
you  may  lay  his  body  in  the  Pantheon  of  Helios  ; 
then  come  hither  to  fetch  it.  If  you  begin  with  riot 
and  clamour,  you  will  fail  in  your  demand,  and  you 
will  prove  yourselves  unworthy  of  your  self-imposed 
mission.' 

An  angry  hissing  protest  followed  on  his  words. 
They  were  in  no  mood  for  reason.  They  were  in 
the  mood  for  revolution  ;  and  Othyris  knew  that  his 
father  would  no  more  treat  with  them  or  argue  with 
them  than  a  huntsman  with  his  hounds.  If  they  could 
not  be  induced  to  go  to  their  homes  quietly  there 
could  be  no  issue  except  insurrection.  He  had  never 
before  seen  an  angry  mob,  for  he  had  always  been 
welcomed  everywhere  with  a  sincere  and  often  an 
enthusiastic  attachment.  It  is  an  ugly  and  a  formid- 
able spectacle  at  all  times.  The  strong  smell  from 
their  unwashed  flesh  and  their  unclean  clothes  tainted 
the  fresh  mountain  air,  stifled  the  odours  of  the 
flowers  and  grasses.  f  O  humanity  !  what  a  dread 
beast  you  are  ! '  he  thought,  as  all  must  do  who  see 
it  in  its  nakedness,  stripped  of  hypocritical  pretence 
and  the  cover  of  courtesy.  But  such  as  it  was  he 
had  to  deal  with  it  and  dominate  it,  or  hundreds  of 
them  would  go  up  to  the  house  of  Ilia  and  would 
profane  the  peace  and  solemnity  of  death.  He 
looked  down  on  the  inflamed  faces  of  the  men,  the 
nude  breasts  of  the  women,  the  tangled  hair  and  men- 


xxi  HELIANTHUS  335 

acing  eyes  of  the  youths,  the  laurel  boughs  broken 
and  dust-covered,  the  little  children  alarmed  and  cling- 
ing to  their  mothers'  skirts;  he  could  hear  the  tram- 
pling on  the  rocky  road  of  many  others  not  as  yet  in 
sight ;  the  frightened  birds  flew  out  from  the  foliage, 
the  clear  brooks  ran  across  the  road,  over  the  soiled, 
bare  feet,  and,  touching  human  flesh,  became  defiled. 

*  People  of  Helios  ! '  said  Othyris,  and  his  voice 
was  far-reaching  as  the  note  of  a  clarion.     f  People 
of  Helios,  hearken  to  me.     You  must  go  back  to 
your  homes  in  peace  and  decency,  or  I  can  be  with 
you  in  nothing.     It  is  wrong  and  impious  to  make  a 
great  hero's  death  a  moment  for  disorder  and  riot. 
You  can  accomplish  nothing  by  brawling.     The  tomb 
of  Illyris  ought  to  be  made  where  the  great  men  of 
Helianthus  lie ' 

'Was  Theodoric  a  Helianthine?'  a  man  called 
from  the  crowd. 

'  No ;  he  was  not,'  Othyris  answered  calmly. 
c  But  that  is  beside  this  question.  Illyris  was  a 
pure-bred  Helianthine,  and  you  desire  that  he  should 
have  his  sepulchre  made  in  the  mausoleum  of  the 
country.  Well,  go  back  to  your  homes,  and  I 
promise  that  you  shall  have  your  desire  ;  but  I  will 
do  nothing  for  menace  or  insult.' 

The  multitude  was  silent.  The  courage  of  his 
speech  and  the  calmness  and  dignity  of  his  bearing 
impressed  them.  But  one  voice  shouted  from  the 
close-pressed  throng  :  — 

c  You  promise,  you  say  !  You  are  a  prince. 
Who  can  trust  princes  ?' 

*  You  may  trust  me,'  said  Othyris  coldly.     '  I  give 
you  my  word  that  the  body  of  Platon  Illyris  shall  lie 
in  the  House  of  the  Immortals.' 


336  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

'The  word  of  a  Gunderode  !  '  said  an  angry,  rude 
voice  from  an  unseen  speaker. 

Othyris  coloured  with  pain  rather  than  offence. 

{  The  word  of  a  gentleman/  he  said  briefly. 

The  people  cheered  him. 

c  The  word  of  an  honest  man,'  said  one  of  their 
leaders.  '  We  will  trust  him,  friends.  If  he  fail  us, 
we  can  chastise.' 

'  He  will  not  fail,'  said  a  woman. 

A  man  who  was  a  worker  in  metal  and  had  a  fine 
countenance  and  a  lofty  stature  shouted  in  a  clear 
resounding  voice :  — 

1  Let  us  trust  him.  If  he  fail  us  he  shall  answer 
to  us.  And  whether  by  peace  or  by  force  Illyris 
shall  lie  with  Theodoric.' 

c  It  shall  be  so,'  said  Othyris.  c  Now  go,  my 
friends,  to  your  homes.  So  you  will  best  do  his  will. 
He  lived  in  solitude  and  obscurity  for  forty  years 
rather  than  cause  disunion  amongst  his  countrymen. 
If  the  State  forgot  him,  you  also,  his  people,  his 
children,  remembered  too  little.' 

The  conscience  of  the  throng  was  moved,  its 
remorse  was  stirred,  its  regrets  were  stung  to  the 
quick;  the  men  and  the  youths  were  silent,  and  the 
sobs  of  some  women  were  audible  in  the  stillness. 

£Go  to  your  homes,'  said  Othyris.  'We  will 
meet  soon  again.' 

Then  he  descended  from  the  stone  platform, 
and  uncovered  his  head  in  farewell  to  the  multitude. 

A  loud,  long,  echoing  cheer  rose  from  the  ranks 
of  the  populace.  They  had  faith  in  him. 

They  pressed  around  him  ;  they  were  curious, 
grateful,  excited,  awed ;  they  wanted  to  see  him 
close,  to  feel  his  clothes,  to  touch  his  hand,  to  see 


xxi  HELIANTHUS  337 

him  face  to  face  ;  they  were  dangerous  out  of  the 
excess  of  their  enthusiasm,  for  they  were  unwilling  to 
let  him  go. 

*  Come  with  us  !     Come  with  us  ! '  they  shouted  ; 
they  wanted  to    take   him    down    in    triumph  into 
Helios. 

But  he  knew  that  if  he  were  seen  with  them  all 
possible  chance  of  gaining  the  realisation  of  their 
wish  would  be  destroyed.  It  was  impossible  that 
he  should  enter  the  city  as  the  companion  and  the 
leader  of  this  mob. 

'  Fall  back.  Leave  me  free,'  he  said  to  them.  f  If 
you  detain  me,  if  you  hamper  me,  you  will  render 
it  impossible  for  me  to  obtain  you  the  fulfilment  of 
your  wish.  My  friend,'  he  added,  turning  to  the 
man  who  had  said  c  Let  us  trust  him,'  { you  have 
influence  over  them,  keep  them  back.  Leave  me 
free.  Otherwise  I  can  do  nothing.  Nor  will  I,  by 
any  force  which  they  can  use,  go  down  into  Helios 
in  their  company.' 

There  was  a  savage,  sullen  muttering  of  chagrin 
and  of  offence  in  the  people  nearest  to  him.  They 
were  offended,  and  they  were  conscious  that  they 
could  by  brute  force  make  their  offence  felt. 

*  People  of  Helios,'  said  Othyris,  '  you  can  kill 
me  if  you  like  ;  I  am  unarmed,  and  you  are  many  in 
numbers.      But  you  cannot  make  me  do  what  I  do 
not  choose  to  do,  or  what  I  think  unworthy.     Let 
me  pass.' 

c  Let  him  pass,'  said  the  man  who  had  said  f  Let 
us  trust  him.'  The  people  hesitated  ;  Othyris  took 
advantage  of  that  hesitation ;  he  shook  off  the  hand 
laid  upon  him,  and  with  tranquillity  and  dignity 
passed  through  them  to  the  woods  on  the  opposite 


338  HELIANTHUS  CHAP,  xxi 

side  of  the  road.  Thence  there  ran  a  by-path,  con- 
cealed by  the  darkness  of  the  deep  shade,  which  led 
down  towards  the  shore ;  Janos  had  one  day  shown 
him  that  woodland  way.  He  was  at  once  lost  to 
the  sight  of  the  crowd  in  the  dark  foliage  of  the 

o         .  D 

close-growing  trees. 

'  If  he  fail  us,  we  shall  know  how  to  avenge  it,' 
said  the  man  from  the  docks  once  more. 


CHAPTER   XXII 

THE  official  spies  and  professional  informers,  with 
whom  Helios,  like  all  modern  cities,  was  infested, 
had  of  course,  as  soon  as  these  events  happened,  in- 
formed the  authorities  of  what  had  occurred  and  of 
what  was  menaced.  The  troops  were  immediately 
confined  to  barracks  ;  the  guns  of  the  fortresses  turned 
upon  the  town  ;  the  sentinels  doubled,  and  all  those 
precautions  taken  which  render  a  successful  insur- 
rection almost  an  impossibility  in  any  modern  and 
monarchical  country. 

The  demonstration  had  taken  the  Government 
by  surprise  and  found  them  unprepared ;  and  the 
alarm  bells  of  telegraph  and  telephone  were  ringing 
frantically  wherever  the  governing  forces  of  civil  and 
military  control  were  located.  But  the  people  were 
peaceable,  though  enthusiastic  and  excited ;  and  the 
Ministry  decided  that  they  should  not  be  interfered 
with,  so  long  as  no  revolutionary  cries  were  heard 
and  no  revolutionary  emblems  displayed. 

Michael  Soranis,  who  had  succeeded  Kantakuzene 
when  the  latter  was  defeated  over  the  Crown  Prince's 
scheme  for  the  fortification  of  the  Hundred  Isles, 
was  still  Prime  Minister.  As  a  politician  he  was 
considered  eminently  safe,  and  slow,  and  sure  ;  he 
had  been  often  in  office  when  the  monarch  or  the 

339 


340  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

country  had  been  desirous  of  quiet  and  sleep.  He 
was  adroit,  conciliatory,  plausible,  with  no  stiffness 
of  backbone,  or  disagreeable  stability  of  principle, 
about  him.  It  was  hard  on  such  a  Minister  to  be 
confronted  with  a  dilemma  so  difficult,  an  obstinacy 
so  painful.  Soranis  was  essentially  an  opportunist ; 
he  had  been  a  physician  in  early  life,  and  knew  how 
to  soothe  excited  pulses,  lower  high  temperatures, 
persuade  to  painful  cures,  and  amiably  divert 
diseased  fancies ;  but  this  position  required  strength, 
and  he  was  not  strong. 

He  had  entered  the  arena  of  politics  on  the  buck- 
jumping  galloway  of  Radicalism  ;  but  it  had  been 
always  unsuited  to  his  taste  and  powers,  and  he  had 
for  many  years  seated  himself  more  comfortably  on 
the  park-hack  of  Liberal  Conservatism.  He  liked 
to  amble  smoothly  over  the  tan,  in  the  circus  of  high 
office,  with  the  diamond  stars  due  to  successful 
equestrianism  on  his  breast. 

This  affair,  which  was  a  great  disturbance,  almost 
an  insurrection,  troubled  him  greatly.  It  was  un- 
expected, inconvenient,  dangerous,  and  most  ill- 
timed.  Like  many  active  political  events  it  had 
sprung  out  of  a  mustard-seed  fallen  in  a  gutter,  and 
might  be  big  with  confusion  and  convulsion.  It  was 
a  water-spout  in  a  clear  sky.  It  was  a  heat-wave  in 
a  cool  land.  It  was  a  falling  mast  on  a  winning 
schooner.  It  was  a  squirming  black  squib  in  a 
bather's  sunny  creek.  It  was  any  imaginable 
torment  which  could  upset  the  desirable,  and  create 
the  perilous.  Go  which  way  it  would,  end  how  it 
might,  it  would  cause  him  to  be  assailed  equally  by 
hostile  and  by  friendly  groups  in  the  Chamber.  It 
was  a  ball  of  pins  with  all  the  points  set  outward. 


xxn  HELIANTHUS  341 

Let  him  take  it  and  hold  it  as  he  would,  he  must 
inevitably  be  pricked  by  it.  He  would  almost 
certainly  please  none  by  his  treatment  of  it.  He 
would  quite  certainly  offend  either  the  King  or  the 
nation. 

Like  all  successful  men  Soranis  had  many  enemies. 
He  knew  that  these  would  all  eagerly  seize  on  this 
incident  as  on  a  dead  cat  to  throw  at  him.  True,  the 
Chambers  were  not  then  sitting;  it  was  the  brief 
recess  of  Pentecost ;  but  time  intensifies  malice,  as  it 
adds  to  the  bitterness  of  the  brandy  in  which  peach 
kernels  are  steeped.  He  knew  that  his  enemies 
would  not  let  a  single  point  against  him  rest,  or  lose 
by  waiting.  What  also  complicated  his  responsibility 
was  that  the  King  and  the  Crown  Prince  were  away 
shooting,  having  left  the  city  at  dawn  for  one  of  the 
royal  forests  in  the  hills. 

He  felt  that  the  position  was  a  cruel  and  unjust 
one  for  a  politician  who  had  never  failed  to  trim 
his  course  with  the  most  skilful  and  scientific  naviga- 
tion. The  terrible  mixture  of  the  Danish  Hamlet 
and  the  English  Henry  the  Fifth  which  seemed  to 
him  united  in  the  person  of  Othyris  appeared  to  him 
more  perilous  to  himself  and  his  Cabinet  than  any 
number  of  anarchical  conspiracies.  He  admired 
Othyris ;  he  recognised  the  charm,  the  talent,  the 
courage,  the  altruism  of  the  King's  second  son ;  but 
he  felt  that  a  revolutionary  prince  was  a  sore  difficulty 
in  the  path  of  a  Minister  of  the  Crown,  who  only 
asked  of  fate  to  be  all  things  to  all  men. 

All  Soranis  had  desired  and  tried  to  bring  about 
had  been  that  peace  external  and  internal  should  last 
his  time  and  let  him  die  in  office ;  that  the  nation 
should  be  quiet  and  orderly,  reasonable  and  pliable, 


342  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

should  never  be  noisy  or  quarrelsome  and  create 
embarrassments,  either  at  home  or  abroad.  This 
was,  he  thought,  the  least  the  Helianthines  could 
do  in  return  for  his  own  admirable  government ;  a 
beautiful  buoy  of  cork  floating  serenely  on  an  oiled 
sea.  Yet,  behold  them  !  Up  in  arms,  and  baying 
like  the  brutes  they  really  were ;  with  no  gratitude 
for  the  smooth  years  of  subsidised  commerce  and 
increased  national  debt  which  he  himself  had  given 
them !  The  throne,  the  army,  the  navy,  the  ex- 
chequer, the  police,  the  church,  had  always  been 
kept  by  him  in  respect  and  prosperity,  following 
each  other  inharmonious  sequence  like  the  Corinthian 
columns  of  a  temple  portico ;  and  these  ignorant  and 
yelling  crowds,  who  knew  nothing  of  the  beauties  of 
political  architecture,  were  endeavouring  to  resus- 
citate the  memory  of  a  forgotten  patriot  whose  shade 
was  as  much  to  be  dreaded  by  authority  as  the  ghost 
of  Hamlet's  father  by  Hamlet's  step-father ! 

Soranis  felt  that  he  had  neither  the  years  nor  the 
temper  to  cope  with  such  a  position,  and,  as  though 
the  question  in  itself  was  not  thorny  and  difficult 
enough,  there  was  added  to  it  the  extreme  embarrass- 
ment of  the  entrance  into  it  of  the  King's  second 
son. 

The  Minister  was  no  stranger  to  the  permanent 
differences  existing  between  the  father  and  the  son. 
More  than  once  these  had  strained  all  his  tact  and 
persuasiveness  to  the  utmost  in  the  effort  to  prevent 
the  friction  from  becoming  visible  to  others;  and  a  per- 
verse fate  seemed  to  accumulate  causes  and  reasons 
for  their  divergence.  To  him,  as  to  the  royal  family, 
the  perversity  of  Elim  seemed  diabolical. 

Born  to  the  most  enviable  fate  that  the  heart  of 


xxn  HELIANTHUS  343 

man  could  desire,  why  could  he  not  be  content  with 
it  ?  To  Soranis,  son  of  a  provincial  apothecary,  and 
a  struggling  professional  man  himself  in  early  man- 
hood, it  seemed  monstrous  that  a  prince  could  be 
dissatisfied  with  his  lot.  Therefore,  when  Othyris 
said  to  him,  ( I  have  given  my  word  to  the  people 
that  Illyris  shall  be  buried  in  the  Pantheon,'  nothing 
but  the  extreme  reverence  for  rank  of  a  democrat 
who  has  been  converted  to  reactionism  could  have 
restrained  him  from  a  choleric  and  irreverent  im- 
precation. 

Instead  of  such  a  natural  ebullition  of  temper, 
he  said,  nervously,  and  with  a  sigh :  — 

c  I  fear,  sir,  that  your  Royal  Highness  did  not 
realise,  did  not  consider  sufficiently,  the  extreme 
embarrassment  which  such  a  promise  on  your  part 
would  cause  to  the  government.' 

f  I  did  not  think  of  the  government,  certainly,' 
said  Othyris. 

c  Nor  of  His  Majesty,'  said  Soranis,  timidly  and 
tentatively. 

*  Where  does  my  father  come  into  this  question  ? ' 
said  Othyris. 

Soranis  made  a  little  deprecatory  murmur  of  pro- 
test. 

Where,  he  thought,  did  His  Majesty  not  enter, 
all-pervading  essence  of  will  and  conscience  as  he 
was  ?  Who  should  or  would  be  concerned  in  the 
question  of  a  burial  in  the  House  of  Immortals,  if 
not  the  monarch  who  considered  his  grandsire  the 
first  of  all  immortals  ? 

Othyris  knew  well  that  to  the  King  the  demand 
for  the  interment  of  Illyris  under  the  same  dome  with 
Theodoric  would  appear  a  blasphemy,  a  treason,  an 


344  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

unspeakable  infamy  ;  but  he  did  not  intend  to  discuss 
that  side  of  the  subject.  He  waited  awhile  for  some 
more  complete  reply  from  Soranis.  Failing  to  receive 
one,  he  said  :  — 

'Your  Excellency  cannot  fail,  I  imagine,  to  per- 
ceive the  stringent  necessity  which  exists  that  the 
warrant  of  my  word  shall  be  made  good  by  all  the 
powers  responsible  for  law  and  order  ? ' 

t  No  doubt,  sir,  no  doubt,'  murmured  Soranis,  but 
with  no  great  firmness  of  tone.  {  No  doubt  your 
Royal  Highness  must  be  supported.' 

In  his  own  mind  he  saw  vividly  two  pictures:  the 
one  of  a  crowd  which  would  comprehend  no  argu- 
ments except  cannon ;  the  other  of  a  monarch  who 
would  neither  understand  nor  endure  any  arguments 
whatever.  He  himself  was  between  Scylla  and 
Charybdis. 

£  You  can  only  support  me,'  replied  Othyris,  {  by 
carrying  out  my  promise  to  the  people.' 

Soranis  nervously  balanced  a  paper-knife  on  his 
finger. 

f  Would  it  not  have  been  possible,  sir,  for  you  to 
—  to  —  have  avoided  the  incident  altogether  ? ' 

1 1  did  not  wish  to  avoid  it.  I  sought  it.  But  it 
is  quite  useless  to  discuss  this  part  of  the  question 
now.  What  has  been  done  cannot  be  altered.' 

c  May  I  ask,  sir,  did  the  mob  seem  to  you  to  be 
getting  beyond  the  control  of  the  police  ?  * 

c  The  people  were  orderly  and  reasonable,'  said 
Qthyris,  with  emphasis ;  he  resented  the  epithet  of 
mob.  f  The  police  did  not  interest  or  occupy  me 
at  all/ 

The  Minister  drew  himself  up  a  little  stiffly.  To 
touch  with  irreverence  these  guardians  of  the  State  is, 


xxii  HELIANTHUS  345 

in  the  eyes  of  a  Minister,  to  use  a  chasuble  and  a 
reliquary  as  a  cigar-box  and  a  spittoon  ;  the  priests 
of  the  altars  of  authority  would  burn  the  sacrilegious 
profaners  if  they  dared. 

*  The  civil-servants  of  order  risk  their  lives,  sir,' 
he  said  coldly. 

'They  are  armed  to  the  teeth,'  said  Othyris  as 
coldly. 

*  I  lament,  sir/  murmured  Soranis  with  reproach, 

*  that  you  do  not  recognise  all  that  government  owes 
to  them.' 

'  I  beg  your  Excellency,'  said  Elim  with  impatience, 

*  not  to  let  us  waste  time  in  discussing  the  virtues  of 
your  agents  de  surete.     I  come  to  you  to  know  if  you 
will  keep  the  pledge  which  I  gave  to  the  people  of 
this  city  in  the  name  of  the  State.     You  will  not,  I 
imagine,  be  willing  to  dishonour  my  word.' 

1  Pray,  sir,  consider,'  said  Soranis  in  agitation. 
'  As  I  understand  from  yourself  and  from  others 
present,  you  have  assured  the  citizens  of  Helios  that 
the  body  of  Platon  Illyris  shall  be  buried  with  public 
honours  in  the  Pantheon  ? ' 

*  Precisely.' 

'You  are  of  opinion,  sir,  that  you  avoided  a 
revolt  and  persuaded  them  to  disperse  quietly  by 
making  this  promise  ? ' 

'  I  repeat,  I  told  them  that,  if  they  would  go  to 
their  homes  without  disturbance,  their  wishes  as 
regards  the  dead  man  should  be  respected  and  carried 
out ;  and  though  they  had  certainly  no  cause  to  trust 
me,  being  who  I  am,  they  were  good  enough  to  have 
faith  in  my  word  and  to  separate  tranquilly.  It  is 
absolutely  certain  that  the  government  must  ratify 
my  promise,  or  disgrace  me  so  utterly  in  my  own 


346  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

sight,  and  that  of  the  country's,  that  I  would  not  live 
a  day  under  the  weight  of  such  opprobrium.' 

4  Pray,  sir,  pray  !  '  said  Soranis,  with  a  feeble,  im- 
ploring gesture  of  his  hands.  *  You  forget,  sir,  you 
most  unfortunately  forget,  that  not  your  Royal 
Highness,  nor  myself,  nor  my  colleagues,  are  free 
agents ;  the  only  supreme  arbiter  in  this,  as  in  all 
matters,  is  His  Majesty  the  King.' 

'You  exaggerate  my  father's  power,  which  you 
seem  to  forget  is  not  absolute  ;  it  happily  stops  short 
of  enforcing  any  man  living  into  the  business  of 
tricking  a  nation.' 

'  But,  sir  —  but,  sir  —  pardon  me,  you  had  no  title 
to  give  that  promise ;  it  is  invalid ;  it  is  no  more 
than  a  minor's  signature  to  a  donation.' 

'  It  is  invalid  if  the  government  do  not  ratify  it ; 
that  is,  I  alone  am  impotent  to  enforce  your  fulfil- 
ment of  it.  I  am  as  impotent  as  the  minor  to  whom 
you  compare  me.  But  there  is  one  thing  of  which  I 
am  master,  and  that  is  my  own  life.  I  will  not  live 
as  a  liar  in  the  sight  of  a  multitude  that  trusted 
me.  Let  the  body  of  Platon  Illyris  be  laid  in  state 
in  the  Pantheon,  and  let  his  tomb  be  made  there.  It 
is  nothing  strange  or  wrong.  He  will  but  have  his 
rightful  place,  here  in  the  heart  of  Helios,  beside  the 
man  to  whom  he  gave  a  kingdom.  What  is  it  for 
you  to  do  ?  Nothing.  But  if  it  be  as  hard  as  to 
move  mountains,  and  to  dry  up  seas,  you  will  do  it. 
I  tell  you  I  will  not  break  my  faith  with  the  people 
of  Helios.' 

1  Sir,  sir,'  muttered  the  unhappy  Minister,  '  you 
ask  of  me  impossibilities,  you  expect  miracles  ;  you 
must  know  that  His  Majesty,  your  father,  will  never 
allow  the  bones  of  the  revolutionary  Illyris  to  be  laid 


xxn  HELIANTHUS  347 

by  the  hallowed  dust  of  the  Great  Theodoric.  It  is 
out  of  all  question.  To  speak  of  such  a  project  even 
to  His  Majesty  would  be  an  outrage  ! ' 

Othyris  passed  over  the  protest,  as  too  puerile  to 
call  for  refutation. 

'  It  is  for  your  Excellency  to  make  His  Majesty 
the  King  understand  that  the  will  of  the  people  in 
this  matter  must  be  done.  You  will  only  have  to 
show  the  Red  Spectre.  My  father  does  not  love  the 
Red  Spectre.' 

t  He  has  never  quailed  before  its  apparition,  sir  ! ' 

*  No  ?     Are  you  sure  ? ' 

Soranis  met  the  eyes  of  his  visitor  and  did  not 
support  their  inquiry  very  steadily. 

'  It  is  impossible.  It  is  impossible,'  he  said  in 
ever-increasing  agitation.  '  Set  my  devotion  to  your 
House  to  any  other  test,  sir  ! ' 

4  This,  and  no  other,'  replied  Othyris.  '  In 
twenty-four  hours'  time  let  the  body  of  Platon  Illyris 
lie  under  the  dome  of  the  mausoleum.' 

Soranis  shook  like  a  leaf. 

1  If  this  young  man  ever  be  king  ! '  he  thought ;  he 
felt  that  if  that  ever  came  to  pass,  such  Ministries  as 
that  of  the  Soranian  would  be  things  of  the  past. 

*  His    Majesty    is   shooting   at    Rodonthe,'  said 
Soranis  helplessly. 

c  Send  to  him  there.' 

f  I  dare  not,  sir,  I  dare  not ! ' 

f  It  is  your  duty.' 

f  Sir,  His  Majesty  will  not  be  disturbed  by  any 
Minister  when  he  is  engaged  in  the  chase/ 

c  A  Minister  must  disregard  such  orders  when 
there  is  question  of  the  public  weal.' 

But  Soranis  was  not  a  man  to  place  the  public 


348  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

weal  first  and  the  royal  will  second.  When  he  ate 
the  breast  of  a  pheasant  shot  by  a  sovereign  it  seemed 
to  him  of  more  exquisite  flavour  than  that  of 
ordinary  pheasants  ;  and  no  doubt  the  public  thought 
so  too,  for  poulterers  found  it  answer  their  purpose 
to  ticket  game  exposed  for  sale  in  their  shops,  'Shot 
by  H.  M.  the  King/  The  nobility  smiled  ;  the 
populace  laughed ;  but  the  middle  classes  purchased 
and  ate.  We  know  that  in  all  lands  the  middle 
classes  are  the  backbone,  the  spinal  marrow,  the 
moral  and  mental  medulla  of  the  nation  ;  but  the 
spine  is  a  little  too  ready  to  bend.  Soranis,  born  of 
them,  kept  their  soul  though  he  rose  above  their 
class  and  changed  his  shape. 

f  Why  not  see  His  Majesty  yourself,  sir  ? '  he  said 
nervously.  { Your  eloquence ' 

f  My  eloquence,'  said  Othyris,  '  would  but  act  as 
an  irritant.  My  father  and  I  are  not  friends/ 

Soranis  gave  a  gesture  of  entreaty  and  pain. 

f  Then  what  a  task  you  set  me,  sir ! ' 

{  Let  me  hear  from  you  at  my  own  residence,'  said 
Othyris,  tired  of  argument;  then,  humbly  accom- 
panied by  the  Minister  into  the  open  air,  he  took 
his  leave. 

Soranis  returned  to  his  library  and  threw  himself 
into  a  deep  chair,  a  limp,  quivering,  silent,  helpless 
little  figure,  his  "grey  head  bowed  upon  his  hands. 
He  had  not  the  slightest  intention  of  going  to  Ro- 
donthe  ;  no  one  ever  disturbed  the  King  when  shoot- 
ing. He  loved  power,  he  loved  dignities,  he  loved  the 
indulgence  of  nepotism,  the  pleasures  of  patronage ; 
he  loved  his  Court  dress,  the  insignia  of  great  orders ; 
he  loved  the  deputations  at  railway  stations,  and  the 
banquets  in  municipal  halls  ;  he  loved  the  panegyrics 


xxn  HELIANTHUS  349 

of  the  home  newspapers  and  the  applause  of  the 
foreign  Press  ;  he  loved  the  familiar  intercourse  with 
sovereigns,  the  smiles  of  royal  women,  the  luxury  of 
special  trains,  the  whole  atmosphere  of  homage,  of 
success,  of  ambition  gratified  and  of  far  heights 
scaled,  of  lucrative  investments  made  easy  by  early 
knowledge  of  coming  events  ;  and  all  these  pleasures, 
the  crown  of  life,  were  imperilled  for  him  by  a  mad 
young  man  and  a  crazy  crowd !  Soranis,  for  the 
first  time  in  his  career,  felt  that  the  uncertainty  of 
circumstance,  and  the  pressure  of  accident,  are  unjust 
factors  in  the  careers  of  successful  and  self-made 
men. 

Soranis  was  a  great  believer  in  soporifics,  politi- 
cally called  trimming ;  he  was  always  the  advocate  of 
middle  courses,  of  safe  concessions,  of  slow  and 
careful  steering  of  the  ship  of  the  State.  The  events 
of  the  morning  as  he  understood  them  in  outline 
troubled  him  infinitely,  and  the  part  which  the  heir- 
presumptive  to  the  throne  had  taken  troubled  him 
still  more.  It  would  be  impossible  for  the  govern- 
ment to  disown  the  act  of  a  prince  of  the  blood  ;  and 
it  seemed  to  him  quite  as  impossible  that  the  gov- 
ernment should  ratify  it  or  that  the  monarch  should 
condone  it.  A  solution  of  the  dilemma  would  have 
been  possible  to  an  extremely  reactionist  or  to  a 
frankly  revolutionary  Ministry ;  but  to  his,  which 
was  a  see-saw  between  the  two,  and  pre-eminently 
conciliatory,  the  difficulty  was  overwhelming. 

Obsequious  though  Soranis  was  to  Othyris,  nothing 
would  induce  him  to  send  a  messenger  to  Rodonthe  ; 
and  Othyris  hesitated  to  send  one  himself,  knowing 
that  any  direct  communication  from  himself  could 
only  embitter  and  prejudice  the  cause  he  had  under- 


350  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

taken  to  support.  There  was  nothing  to  be  done  but 
to  await  the  return  of  the  monarch  from  Rodonthe  ; 
and  no  one  knew  when  this  would  take  place. 

Soranis  came  to  the  palace  of  Othyris  two  hours 
later  after  a  painful  period  of  indecision  and  distress. 

f  I  have  decided,  sir,'  said  Soranis  with  dejection 
and  a  nervous  movement  of  his  thin  small  hands, 
'  that  I  cannot  take  upon  myself  the  task  which  you, 
sir,  have  allotted  to  me.  I  cannot  in  conscience 
recommend  His  Majesty  to  take  such  a  course  as  the 
admittance  of  the  remains  of  an  Illyris  to  the 
Pantheon  of  this  city.  I  dare  not,  sir,  even  broach 
such  a  subject  to  the  King.  I  am  unequal  to  all 
which  would  ensue,  did  I  do  so.  I  am  old,  I  am 
unwell  ;  I  am  wholly  unable,  sir,  to  go  through  such 
trying  scenes  as  must  ensue  on  such  a  demand. 
When  I  have  audience  with  His  Majesty  I  shall 
merely  tender  my  resignation  on  the  score  of  my 
health  and  my  inability  to  cope  with  the  present 
situation,  and  advise  him  to  send  for  His  Excellency 
Demetrius  Kantakuzene,  to  whom  such  a  mission  as 
your  Royal  Highness  has  confided  to  me  will 
probably  appear  at  once  sympathetic,  and  of  a  piece 
with  his  opinions  and  interests.' 

He  paused,  coughing  to  hide  his  emotion,  for  he 
suffered  acutely. 

AdieU)  veau,  vache,  cochon^  couvee  I  He  was  more 
to  be  pitied  than  the  girl  of  the  fable,  for  he  had 
possessed  the  eggs  and  the  chickens,  had  killed  the 
fat  pigs  and  pickled  them,  and  had  cow  and  calf  in 
his  byre.  He  had  enjoyed  all  the  charms  of  office, 
and  might  have  done  so  for  years  to  come,  but  for 
the  quixotic  folly  of  a  headstrong  young  man. 

'  You    have    decided    wisely,    I     think,'     replied 


xxir  HELIANTHUS  351 

Othyris  coldly.  *  But  in  this  manner  much  time 
will  be  lost,  and  time  in  this  matter  is  all  important. 
Send  Kantakuzene  unofficially  to  me  to-night.' 

*  What,  sir  ? '  murmured  Soranis,  aghast.    *  To  see 
you — before  being  summoned  by  the  Crown  !   Such 
a  step  would  be  wholly  without  precedent,  wholly 
unconstitutional.' 

*  Oh,   I    do    not    mind    being  unconstitutional ! ' 
said  Elim,  with  the  smile  which  his  elder  brother 
found    so    impertinent.     *  The    Constitution    is    a 
rickety  fabric  and  does  not  impress  me  ! ' 

c  Oh,  sir,'  exclaimed  Soranis, '  I  entreat  your  Royal 
Highness  to  weigh  what  you  say  ! ' 

'  And  I  entreat  your  Excellency  to  waste  no  more 
time,'  said  Othyris  with  impatience  and  authority. 
4  If  you  desire  and  intend  to  resign  as  soon  as  my 
father  returns,  I  beg  of  you,  in  some  way  or  another, 
to  send  this,  with  my  message,  to  the  deputy  for 
Concordia.' 

He  held  out  a  slender  key  which  he  had  taken 
out  of  his  waistcoat  pocket. 

*  Give    him    this  pass-key.     The  trustiest  of  my 
friends  will  meet  him  and  bring  him  to  me.     You 
will  not  go  to  him  personally,  no  doubt.      But  your 
Excellency  must  send    some    safe   and  confidential 
person  to  him,  for  he  must  be  here  before  my  father's 
return  from  Rodonthe.     I  pray  your  Excellency  to 
lose  no  time.     Do  not  force  me  to  remind  you  that 
my  honour  is  pledged  to  the  people  of  Helios.' 

Soranis  was  like  a  tortured  animal  held  immovable 
to  endure  electrical  shocks. 

*  I  entreat  your  Royal  Highness  to  reflect  that  you 
may  some  day  be  called  on  by  Providence  to  rule 
over  this  realm  ! '  he  murmured  feebly. 


352  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

c  God  forbid  that  day  should  ever  dawn  ! '  said 
Othyris.  *  It  is,  I  think,  improbable  that  wild  boars 
will  have  killed  both  my  father  and  my  brother  this 
morning  at  Rodonthe  !  ' 

f  Oh,  sir  !  How  is  it  possible  to  jest  ? '  ejaculated 
Soranis.  Was  it  possible  that  a  scion  of  a  reigning 
House  could  speak  thus  of  his  august  relatives  ? 

Othyris  rose  with  that  sterner  and  colder  look 
upon  his  face  which  men  feared  in  the  rare  moments 
that  it  came  there. 

*  Your  Excellency  will  pardon  me  if  I  deprive 
myself  of  the  pleasure  of  your  presence.  But  in  this 
matter  there  is  not  a  moment  to  be  lost.  Beg 
Kantakuzene  to  come  here  by  the  garden  gates  at 
the  north  side  of  this  house  as  long  before  my 
father's  return  as  possible.' 

Soranis  felt  dominated  and  cowed  ;  he  was  not 
brave,  either  morally  or  physically ;  and  although 
he  had  no  doubt  that  there  was  some  lesion  in  the 
brain  of  this  headstrong  prince,  yet  that  conviction 
only  made  him  the  more  anxious  to  escape  from  the 
presence  of  Othyris.  He  took  a  formal  and  a 
humble  leave,  and  went,  taking  the  garden-key  with 
him ;  a  sad  and  mortified  man,  conscious  that  he 
might  have  gone  on  smoothly  and  pleasantly  through 
various  sessions,  trotting  round  the  ring  in  the  circus 
of  office,  if  Platon  Illyris  had  died,  as  he  should  in 
the  course  of  nature  have  died,  some  thirty  or  forty 
years  earlier  on  some  foreign  strand  of  exile.  The 
great  Theodoric,  the  contemporary  of  Illyris,  had 
died  of  a  surfeit  of  oysters  and  red  burgundy  when 
only  fifty  years  of  age. 

Providence  takes  so  little  account  of  men's 
appetites  and  digestions !  It  does  not,  indeed,  seem 


xxn  HELIANTHUS  353 

even  to  have  ever  reckoned  with  them  as  what  they 
are,  the  chief  factors  in  the  disposal  of  human 
affairs. 

In  the  course  of  an  hour  the  garden  pass-key  was 
duly  conveyed  to  the  deputy  for  Concordia,  who 
came  to  the  postern  gate  of  the  gardens  of  Othyris, 
entered  the  gardens  unseen,  and  took  his  way,  with 
strict  care  for  secrecy,  to  the  private  apartments  of 
the  King's  second  son.  Kantakuzene  felt  consider- 
able curiosity  as  to  the  reason  for  his  unofficial  sum- 
mons. He  attributed  it,  however,  to  the  events  of 
the  day,  which  he  had  himself  followed  with  keen 
interest  and  considerable  apprehension ;  knowing 
well  that  it  is  easier  to  excite  a  crowd  than  it  is  to 
control  it,  to  set  a  ball  rolling  down  a  slope  than  to 
stop  it. 

Even  as  he  was  ushered  into  the  presence  of 
Othyris,  he  heard  the  people  gathered  in  the  Square 
of  the  Dioscuri  calling  on  the  name  of  Elim,  and 
making  that  shrill  clamour  which  in  Helianthus  does 
service  both  as  felicitation  and  as  menace,  as  a  shout 
of  homage  and  a  threat  of  vengeance. 

Kantakuzene  was  carefully  on  his  guard  before 
this  unexpected  summons.  He  did  not  conceal  his 
mingled  admiration  and  disapprobation  of  what  had 
taken  place  at  Aquilegia ;  it  had  perhaps  saved  the 
city  from  riot,  but  it  had  created  a  most  difficult 
position  for  the  government  and  the  monarch. 

Kantakuzene  did  not  lack  courage,  and  when  he 
thought  that  it  was  necessary  to  speak  the  truth  he 
did  so.  When  he  found  that  Othyris  desired  him 
to  go  to  the  King,  he  said  frankly :  — 

'  It  would  be  impossible,  sir.  Nor  would  His 
Majesty  receive  me  in  such  a  capacity.  He  could 


354  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

not  possibly  do  so.  You  seem  to  forget  that  I  am 
the  leader  of  the  Opposition.' 

'  You  cannot  approach  him  unless  you  are  sum- 
moned ? ' 

1 1  cannot,  of  course,  sir.' 

'  Not  to  save  the  city  from  bloodshed  ? ' 

'  Such  a  breach  of  etiquette  would  save  nothing, 
sir.' 

Othyris  was  silent.  He  saw  that  Kantakuzene 
was  right. 

'What  is  to  be  done,  then?'  he  asked.  'My 
promise  must  be  kept  in  twenty-four  hours.  Half 
that  time  has  already  passed.  I  would  write  to  the 
King,  but  he  would  not  read  any  letter  from  me.' 

c  Why,  sir,  did  you  take  so  brief  a  period  ? ' 

c  The  people  were  unwilling  even  to  give  me  so 
much  as  that.  They  desired  to  obtain  the  body  of 
Illyris  then  and  there,  and  carry  it  down  into  the  city 
and  up  to  the  Pantheon.  You  must  know  what 
would  have  taken  place  if  they  had  done  so.' 

c  But  you,  sir,  would  not  have  been  responsible. 
The  responsibility  lay  with  those  in  power,  whose 
duty  it  was  to  preserve  order.' 

f  And  how  is  order  always  preserved  ?  Round 
the  coffin  of  the  man  who  gained  a  kingdom  for  my 
race,  the  blood  of  his  fellow-people  would  have  run 
like  water,  unarmed  crowds  would  have  been  cut 
down  like  grass.' 

4  The  guilt,  sir,  would  not  have  been  yours.' 

'  Thirty  years  ago,  would  you  not  have  done  as  I 
did?' 

4  Perhaps,  sir.     Youth  is  rash.' 

*  And  age  and  success  are  selfish.' 

'  I   admire  the    nobility  of  your  action,  sir;  but 


xxn  HELIANTHUS  355 

meanwhile  the  position  you  have  created  is  most 
strained,  most  dangerous.  Do  you  believe  that  His 
Majesty,  your  father,  will  allow  the  people  to  take 
Illyris  to  the  Pantheon  ? ' 

'  No  ;   I  do  not.' 

4  Then  you  are  prepared  to  throw  your  life  away 
to  produce  no  result  ?  ' 

*  I  shall  certainly  keep  my   word  in  one  manner 
or  the  other  to  the  people  of  Helios.' 

Kantakuzene  was  silent. 

( My  father  fears  revolution,'  added  Othyris. 
*  But  he  unfortunately  believes  in  the  superior  strength 
of  repression.' 

Kantakuzene  thought,  what  he  could  not  say, 
that  the  death  of  his  second  son  would  be  more  wel- 
come than  his  life  to  the  ruler  of  Helianthus. 

'  Was  it  necessary,  sir,  to  give  such  a  pledge,  to 
go  to  such  extremes  ? '  he  said.  {  Could  you  not 
have  persuaded  the  people  to  disperse  and  return  to 
their  homes  ? ' 

*  No,  I  could  not  have  done  so,'   replied   Elim. 
'  Nor  did  I  seek  to  do  so.     They  gave  a  tardy  re- 
membrance to  the  greatest  man  the  country  has  ever 
owned,    and     their    conscience     led    them     aright. 
What !    A  public   burial   with   national  honours   to 
Domitian  Corvus,  and  the  hero  of  Argileion  and  of 
Samaris  shoved  under  the  earth  in  a  graveyard  of  the 
poor  !  The  instinct  of  the  people  was  entirely  right.' 

Kantakuzene  was  silent. 

He  could  not  deny  ;  he  dared  not  agree.  Morally, 
Othyris  had  every  argument  on  his  side  ;  in  practical 
politics  he  was  hopelessly  wrong.  He  had  encour- 
aged the  populace  to  coerce  the  Crown. 

To  Kantakuzene,  who  had  been  Prime  Minister 


356  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

before,  and  intended  to  be  so  again,  the  offence 
seemed  very  great.  He  admired  it ;  he  understood 
it ;  his  sympathies  were  even  aroused  by  it ;  but  he 
condemned  it.  In  a  mere  demagogue  it  might  have 
been  praised ;  but  in  a  son  of  the  King  it  was  a 
grave  offence. 

Honour  is  a  fine  steed  on  which  to  excite  the 
plaudits  of  a  crowd  ;  but  Honour  generally  meets 
with  rough  and  stony  roads  and  has  poison  put  in 
his  drinking-water. 

Kantakuzene  knew  that  a  sharp  and  short  re- 
pression by  troops  of  the  crowds  would  have  been 
less  dangerous  to  the  peace  and  polity  of  the  country 
than  was  the  encouragement  to  rebellion  given  by 
this  alliance  with  the  people  of  the  King's  second  son. 

f  You  were  with  the  people  in  the  days  of  your 
youth,  I  am  aware,'  said  Elim.  '  Even  now  it  is  the 
people  whom  you  represent,  and  in  whose  cause  your 
eloquence  is  often  heard.  It  is  for  the  sake  of  the 
people,  not  for  mine,  that  you  must  urge  my  father 
to  accede  to  their  just  desire.  If  he  refuse,  there 
will  be  civil  war  in  the  streets  in  Helianthus.' 

'  No  doubt,'  thought  Kantakuzene,  as  he  remained 
silent ;  c  and  if  you  have  tenacity  of  purpose,  and 
audacity  and  resolve  and  egotism  enough,  it  is  quite 
possible  that  you  may  make  Helianthus  a  republic 
and  yourself  its  head.' 

c  You  must  warn  my  father,'  said  Othyris ;  {  no  one 
else  will  do  so.' 

'  If  His  Majesty  summon  me,  I  will  do  my  best 
to  convince  him  of  the  danger  of  insurrection,'  re- 
plied Kantakuzene.  (  If  he  do  not,  it  will  be  im- 
possible for  me  to  go  to  the  Soleia.' 

'  That  is   understood,'   said  Othyris.      '  In  that 


xxn  HELIANTHUS  357 

event  there  will  be  bloodshed.  Nothing  will  avert 
it.'  And  he  rose  and  gave  his  hand  to  Kantakuzene. 

He  was  tired  and  anxious  to  be  alone. 

Kantakuzene  returned  to  his  own  residence,  which 
was  close  by ;  the  throngs  in  the  Square  of  the 
Dioscuri  were  still  calling  on  the  name  of  Elim. 
Kantakuzene  was  of  a  temperament  which  is  happiest 
in  perilous  events,  in  difficult  crises,  in  the  excite- 
ment and  the  responsibility  of  complicated  intrigues 
and  obligations  ;  he  was  constitutionally  courageous, 
he  loved  to  wrestle  with  men  and  throw  them. 
Usually,  he  did  throw  them ;  and  he  had  seldom 
had  a  fall  himself. 

But  his  present  mission  was  an  anxiety,  even  a 
terror  to  him  ;  he  did  not  see  his  way  clearly.  Such 
a  mission  as  Othyris  had  given  him  was  wholly  out 
of  order,  and  to  advise  the  King  to  open  the  gates 
of  the  House  of  the  Immortals  to  Platon  Illyris 
seemed  to  him  a  task  of  which  the  issue  might  very 
probably  be  to  close  on  himself  the  gates  of  public 
life  for  ever  and  aye.  He  was  relieved  when  he 
heard  at  his  own  house  that  the  King  had  not  re- 
turned from  Rodonthe.  The  respite  gave  him 
time  to  reflect  and  to  prepare  for  any  event. 

He  was  aware  that  as  a  Radical  leader  he  could 
not  himself  accept  office  if  he  were  forced  to  oppose 
the  desire  of  the  people.  Yet,  even  to  him,  the 
entrance  of  the  bier  of  Illyris  into  the  burial-place 
of  the  Immortals  appeared  an  offence  to  the  reign- 
ing House  which  it  would  be  impossible  for  the 
head  of  that  House  to  condone. 

f  If  only  the  people  will  trust  me  and  be  patient ! ' 
thought  Othyris. 

When  the  evening  papers  announced  that  Soranis 


358  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

was  about  to  resign,  there  was  great  agitation  in  all 
political  spheres  of  action.  It  was  unexpected.  It 
alarmed  all  capitalists  and  speculators.  To  many 
it  was  unintelligible.  Men  were  half  the  night  in 
the  streets.  The  cafes  and  restaurants  buzzed  like 
hives  when  the  bees  are  swarming.  The  troops 
were,  of  course,  kept  confined  to  their  barracks. 
Throngs  of  people  stood  through  the  short  hours  of 
the  summer  night  in  the  Square  of  the  Dioscuri  be- 
fore the  palace  of  Othyris.  But  he  made  them  no 
response  to  their  enthusiasm,  and  neither  came  into 
the  Square  nor  on  to  the  balcony ;  they  shouted  till 
they  were  hoarse,  but  always  in  vain. 

It  was  past  midnight  when  the  carriages  of  the 
royal  sportsmen  rolled  with  noise  and  dust  over  the 
marble  pavements  of  the  streets  and  crashed  into  the 
great  court  of  the  Soleia,  followed  by  the  carriages 
ofthegentlemen  who  had  accompanied  the  expedition, 
and  by  the  brakes  bearing  the  bleeding  carcases  of 
the  grand  beasts,  stags,  does,  elands,  wild  boars, 
slaughtered  for  the  princely  pastime  in  the  close 
season  and  in  the  breeding  time. 

The  King,  fatigued  and  drowsy,  had  only  one 
desire,  his  bed.  The  heaviness  of  sleep  and  stupor 
made  the  news  which  awaited  him  appear  the  more 
intolerable,  and  he  muttered  in  his  throat  oaths 
.which  chilled  the  blood  of  his  gentlemen  of  the 
chamber.  But  he  refused  audience  to  any  one ;  he 
left  all  action  to  the  morning  light ;  he  threw  him- 
self on  the  narrow  mattress  of  his  camp  bed,  and 
dropped  at  once  into  a  deep  slumber  in  which  both 
his  body  and  his  brain  were  stupefied  by  carnage,  by 
brandy,  by  fatigue ;  no  one  dared  disturb  his  august 
repose. 


xxn  HELIANTHUS  359 

Beneath  him,  stretched  on  stone  floors  in  the 
palace  cellars,  the  grand  forest  creatures  he  had 
slain  still  dropped  blood  from  their  innocent  mouths. 

His  son  Elim  did  not  sleep.  He  passed  the 
chief  part  of  the  night  revising  the  various  manners 
in  which  he  had  already  bequeathed  his  properties 
and  provided  for  the  consequences  of  his  own  death, 
for  he  was  fully  resolved  not  to  live  a  day  if,  as  he 
knew  was  probable,  his  promise  to  the  people  should 
not  be  carried  out  by  the  State. 

His  country  should  know,  at  least,  that  he  had 
been  no  traitor.  It  was  a  point  of  honour  to  him, 
as  it  is  to  the  man  who  has  drawn  the  fatal  lot  which 
imposes  suicide  upon  him ;  and,  considering  the  re- 
fusal as  inevitable,  he  prepared  for  it.  Soranis  and 
even  Kantakuzene  were  more  agitated  than  he. 
He  was  as  calm  as  the  Due  d'Enghien  was  on  that 
fatal  morning,  when  the  young  Bourbon's  chief 
anxiety  was  for  the  future  of  his  dog.  In  the  small 
hours  of  the  morning  messages  came  to  Othyris 
that  the  King  had  returned,  and  that  he  had  gone  to 
his  rest  without  receiving  any  Minister  or  even  the 
Prefect  of  the  Palace.  No  one  dared  arouse  him. 

*It  is  certain,  I  imagine,  that  he  will  refuse,' 
thought  his  son. 

Othyris  could  not  in  honour  have  done  any  other 
thing  than  that  which  he  had  done.  Yet  in  his  own 
sight  he  seemed  to  have  failed  in  his  duty  towards 
those  who  could  not  help  themselves  and  whom  he 
had  bidden  return  to  gods  that  he  knew  to  be  false. 
Men  would  praise  him  perhaps,  praise  his  filial 
loyalty  and  his  rejection  of  personal  popularity  ;  but 
though  he  knew  he  could  not  have  done  otherwise 
with  self-respect,  yet  he  felt  himself  that  he  had 


360  HELIANTHUS  CHAP,  xxn 

failed,  where  one  less  scrupulous  and  more  selfish 
might  have  taken  fortune  at  the  flood.  Are  there 
not  moments  in  life  when  a  lesser  crime  should  be 
done  to  avoid  a  greater  crime  ?  Is  there  not  many 
an  instance,  in  the  records  of  history,  of  evil  having 
been  boldly  done,  that  good  should  come  out  from 
it? 

It  seemed  to  him  impossible  that  any  man  living 
should  bend  the  will  of  the  King.  Illyris,  in  the 
opinion  of  the  King,  was  a  republican  who  had  been 
a  rebel ;  the  populace  was  a  hydra-headed  monster ; 
the  popular  will  was  an  insolence,  a  treason,  a  fever 
as  contagious  and  dangerous  as  the  plague,  and  to 
be  stamped  out  like  the  rinderpest. 

The  dead  and  the  living  were  to  the  ruler  of 
Helianthus  alike  unpardonable,  insupportable. 

Othyris  had  given  his  word  to  the  people  in  order 
to  avoid  a  popular  outbreak,  a  beginning  of  revolu- 
tion which  might  be  fraught  with  consequences  incal- 
culable ;  but  as  his  word  could  only  be  kept  if  his 
father  gave  him  the  power  to  keep  it,  he  had  no 
hope  that  he  should  be  able  to  do  so. 

There  was  only  one  way  in  which  he  could  prove 
his  sincerity  to  the  people  if  he  were  denied  the 
power  to  give  them  their  will. 

Death  alone  could  speak  for  him  in  clear  and 
certain  tones.  The  people  would  not  misjudge  his 
motives,  nor  would  the  woman  whom  he  loved. 


CHAPTER   XXIII 

THE  King  rose  late  the  next  morning :  his  temper, 
always  bad,  was  that  of  a  fasting  tiger ;  it  was  not 
improved  by  the  news  which  awaited  him,  or  by  the 
black  coffee  and  cognac  with  which  he  broke  his 
fast.  His  olive  skin  grew  duskier,  his  sullen  eyes 
colder  and  more  obscured ;  he  was  enraged  with 
others  for  that  delay  in  the  conveyance  of  the 
intelligence  to  him  which  had  been  entirely  due  to 
his  own  fault  in  refusing  to  hear  anything  whatever. 
He  cursed  every  one  :  the  governor  of  the  city,  the 
commandant  of  the  troops,  the  chief  of  the  police, 
the  central  government,  his  Ministers,  his  household, 
and,  of  course,  his  second  son  beyond  all  others. 

'  That  I  should  have  bred  an  anarchist ! '  he 
thought,  in  fury ;  and  he  cursed  his  dead  wife  in  her 
grave. 

The  action  of  the  populace  was  to  him  as  un- 
pardonable as  a  kick  from  the  wheeler,  or  a  jib  from 
the  leaders,  is  to  the  driver  of  a  four-in-hand.  His 
Ministers  assured  him  that  the  present  effervescence 
was  as  harmless  as  the  froth  of  seltzer ;  but  he  had 
once  seen  a  seltzer  syphon  explode. 

Meanwhile  the  crowds  increased  with  every  ten 
minutes,  and  were  fed  by  numbers  of  peasants  from 
the  outlying  country,  come  in  with  the  produce  of 

361 


362  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

their  ground,  who  remained  to  see  what  might 
happen. 

The  Crown  Prince  was  sent  for  by  the  King ;  to 
him,  as  to  his  father,  the  whole  events  of  the  previous 
day  appeared  diabolical ;  and  neither  of  them  could 
understand  why  the  crowd  had  not  been  dispersed 
with  bayonets  or  by  an  infantry  volley.  It  was  such 
a  simple  thing  to  do.  What  use  was  the  governor 
of  the  city  if  he  could  not  do  it  ?  As  for  Elim,  they 
knew  well  that  he  was  a  second  Egalite.  Nothing 
that  he  could  do  surprised  either  of  them. 

To  calm  these  furious  waters,  to  moderate  these 
raging  cyclones,  seemed  to  Michael  Soranis,  when 
ushered  into  their  presence,  a  task  wholly  beyond 
his  strength.  John  of  Gunderode,  in  a  suit  of 
shepherd's  plaid  tweed,  with  a  red  cashmere  neck- 
erchief wound  about  his  throat  —  for  he  was  hoarse 
from  a  chill  taken  in  the  woods  whilst  standing  still 
awaiting  the  driven  deer  —  was  not  Jupiter  Tonans 
nor  even  Louis  Quatorze ;  and  his  son  Theo  was  not 
the  Black  Prince,  or  Don  John  of  Austria,  but  a  red- 
faced,  bullet-headed,  angry,  alarmed  person,  twisting 
bristling  moustaches  and  breathing  fiercely  like  a 
chained-up  bull-dog.  Yet  such  as  they  were,  they 
carried  fear  and  awe  into  the  breast  of  the  Prime 
Minister,  who  was  not  a  Sully,  a  Bismarck,  a 
Ricasoli,  or  a  Richelieu,  but  a  plausible  and  pliant 
opportunist  who  disliked  absolutism  and  revolution 
equally,  and  was  absolutely  incapable  of  speaking 
unwelcome  truths  to  his  sovereign.  A  Minister 
ought  not  to  be  a  courtier ;  but,  unfortunately,  the 
two  words  are  too  often  synonymous. 

Morally  the  spine  of  Soranis  grew  more  supple, 
as  physically  it  grew  more  rheumatic.  Reactionism 


xxm  HELIANTHUS  363 

increases  in  an  aging  statesman  as  crust  on  the 
aging  bottle  of  port  wine.  The  loaves  and  fishes, 
which  to  his  youth  used  to  seem  indifferent,  become 
more  indispensable  to  him  as  time  goes  on ;  and 
their  abundance  on  his  own  table  appears  to  him  the 
correct  measure  of  national  prosperity,  because  it  is 
the  measure  of  his  own  personal  success. 

To  Soranis,  therefore,  it  was  in  all  sincerity  the 
most  painful  of  missions  to  stand  before  these  two 
angry  gentlemen,  and  endeavour  to  pour  the  oil  of 
deprecation  on  the  raging  waters  of  their  wrath. 
He  knew  that  he  was  only  partially  trusted  by 
them  ;  he  knew  that  they  always  saw  in  him  a  half- 
hearted conservative  and  monarchist,  a  person  of 
doubtful  and  debatable  principles ;  they  always  re- 
membered against  him  the  years  during  which,  as  a 
doctor  from  the  provinces,  he  had  sat  on  the  left 
benches.  How  persuade  such  hearers  that  the  wish 
of  the  populace  must  be  respected,  without  appearing 
to  be  still  the  tribune  of  the  people  ?  How  excuse  and 
uphold  the  action  of  the  King's  insubordinate  son, 
without  seeming  to  be  the  apologist  of  an  anarchist, 
the  partisan  of  a  rebel  ?  His  naturally  timid  temper 
and  his  failing  health  rendered  him  incapable  of  such 
a  dual  task  as  the  pacification  of  a  furious  monarch 
and  of  an  excited  populace.  He  left  power  with 
sore  distress ;  he  knew  that  at  his  age  he  could 
never  return  to  it.  When  in  office  Corvus  had, 
indeed,  been  much  older  than  he  himself  now  was ; 
but  Corvus  had  been  made  of  brass  and  steel. 
Soranis  was  of  far  more  fragile  stuff.  With  intense 
pain  and  mortification  he  felt  that  he  had  nothing  to 
do  except  to  place  his  resignation  in  his  sovereign's 
hands  ;  and  the  King,  without  any  amenity  of  speech 


364  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

or  manner,  accepted  it  with  a  few  unkind  incisive 
words. 

The  aged  statesman  was  bloodless,  exhausted,  out 
of  breath,  when  he  passed  out  of  the  Soleia. 

c  Sir,'  he  said  feebly  to  Othyris,  a  few  minutes 
later,  f  I  found  myself  unable  to  recommend  to  His 
Majesty  the  ratification  of  your  Royal  Highness's 
promise  to  the  people  of  Helios.  I  could  not 
reconcile  it  with  my  public  duty  nor  with  my 
private  powers ;  I  have  therefore  placed  my  resigna- 
tion in  His  Majesty's  hands,  as  I  had  the  honour  to 
inform  you  that  I  should  do.  I  have  advised  him  to 
summon  His  Excellency  Demetrius  Kantakuzene.' 

f  You  have  done  well,'  said  Othyris,  f  but  do  you 
believe  that  the  King  will  send  for  Kantakuzene  ? ' 

f  His  Majesty  always  acts  constitutionally,  sir/ 

f  In  form,  perhaps,  he  does,'  thought  Othyris, 
'  but  in  spirit  not  often.' 

f  Sir,'  said  Soranis,  greatly  woebegone,  £  your  royal 
father  has  upbraided  me  for  the  actual  course  of 
events.  He  used  expressions  which  I  felt  were 
unjust,  for  I  have  always  done  what  I  believed  to  be 
my  duty.' 

{ I  am  sure  that  your  Excellency  has  always  acted 
for  what  you  considered  the  interests  of  the  country,' 
replied  Othyris ;  and  he  felt  that  he  did  the  fallen 
Minister  no  more  than  justice.  For  Soranis  was 
one  of  those  public  men  who  are  neither  hypocrites 
nor  liars,  but  who  deceive  themselves  into  the  belief 
that  they  serve  their  nation  when  they  only  serve 
themselves. 

Soranis  had,  like  many  another  successful  politician, 
believed  that  his  own  measures  were  wholesome 
medicine  for  the  maladies  of  the  State ;  that  his  own 


xxin  HELIANTHUS  365 

ascendancy  was  the  best  of  all  paregorics,  and  his 
own  administration  at  once  a  purge,  a  tonic,  and  an 
anodyne. 

Humbly,  wearily,  almost  tearfully,  the  ex-Premier 
took  his  leave ;  and  Othyris,  left  alone,  thought : 
*  Kantakuzene  if  he  be  called  will  fail.' 

To  account  for  the  sudden  fall  of  Soranis  it  was 
reported  in  the  official  Press  that  he  had  suffered 
from  a  slight  attack  of  cerebral  paralysis.  But  no 
one  believed  it.  Every  one  felt  sure  that  the 
paralysis  from  which  he  suffered  was  the  inability  of  a 
feeble  politician  to  cope  with  an  unexpected  situation. 

Early  in  the  forenoon  it  was  rumoured  that  the 
resignation  of  Soranis  had  been  accepted,  and  that  it 
was  expected  that  the  King  would  send  for  the 
leader  of  the  Opposition.  The  news  of  the  resigna- 
tion, and  the  hope  that  Kantakuzene  would  be  called 
to  office,  tended  to  soothe  and  pacify  the  people  in 
the  streets,  and  they  waited  without  agitation  and 
impatience  for  further  intelligence. 

They  believed  in  Kantakuzene.  He  had  stepped 
past  them,  and  shut  the  doors  of  reform  in  their 
faces  many  a  time,  but  he  remained  nevertheless  their 
ideal  reformer. 

The  courage  of  Kantakuzene  was  usually  stimu- 
lated by  difficulty,  but  the  task  now  before  him 
seemed  to  him  greater  than  any  man  born  of  woman 
could  bring  to  a  successful  issue.  But  he  accepted 
the  position,  and  brought  to  it  all  his  acumen,  finesse, 
and  knowledge  of  men.  That  he  should  be  summoned 
when  the  streets  of  Helios  were  full  of  agitated  and 
excited  people  flattered  his  self-esteem  and  at  the 
same  time  moved  his  patriotism,  which  had  never 
been  an  artificial  or  insincere  sentiment,  and  armed 


366  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

him  at  all  points  against  the  wrath  of  his  sovereign. 
Kantakuzene  was  neither  false  nor  dishonest ;  but  his 
views,  like  those  of  most  men  who  succeed,  changed 
with  his  fortunes.  It  is  natural  that  the  man  who 
has  arrived  at  a  political  altitude  should  not  think  ill 
of  a  world  which  has  allowed  and  assisted  him  to 
arrive.  The  sentiments  of  a  successful  man  change 
imperceptibly  with  his  success,  but  not  necessarily  in- 
sincerely. To  the  young  lawyer,  holding  a  brief  for 
an  insurgent,  revolution  seems  a  very  different  mat- 
ter to  that  which  it  appears  to  him  when  he  is  a 
statesman  who  can  consign  troops  to  barracks  or  send 
them  out  with  fixed  bayonets  to  clear  the  streets. 
There  is  as  much  difference  between  the  two  stages 
of  the  same  man's  life  as  there  was  between  a  goat- 
herd on  the  slopes  of  Olympus  and  the  Olympian 
Zeus  throned  upon  the  clouds. 

All  the  wisdom  of  Socrates  only  brought  him  the 
cup  of  hemlock.  Successful  men  know  that ;  hence, 
so  gradually  that  they  are  unconscious  of  the  trans- 
formation, they  become  hard,  cold,  gluttonous, 
cynical,  mercenary  ;  their  price  is  a  very  high  one, 
but  they  have  a  price.  Their  ideals  lie  dead,  as 
dead  as  the  wild-flowers  which  they  gathered  in  their 
childhood,  and  threw  down  on  the  grass  of  paths 
which  their  feet  will  never  tread  again.  But  Kanta- 
kuzene did  now  and  then  look  at  the  field-flowers, 
even  as  Disraeli  did  at  the  primroses.  He  was  not 
absolutely  disloyal  to  his  early  tenets  ;  but  he,  like 
Disraeli,  let  them  lie  in  abeyance. 

Like  most  men  who  are  not  fanatics  or  visionaries, 
he  cared  principally  for  his  own  interests;  but  after 
his  own  —  a  long  way  after  —  he  did  care  for  the 
interests  of  his  country. 


xxin  HELIANTHUS  367 

He  knew  that  these  were  imperilled  by  the  policy 
of  the  King  and  of  the  reactionary  party  which  over- 
weighted a  poor  nation  with  fiscal  burdens,  sacrificed 
all  useful  progress  to  military  expenditure,  and  was 
the  dupe  of  showy  and  useless  alliances,  which  kept 
the  tired  people  armed  to  the  teeth  and  bowed  down 
under  the  pack-saddle  of  a  monstrous  taxation.  Office 
was  naturally  his  goal  for  his  own  personal  ambi- 
tions, but  in  addition  to  these  for  his  sense  that  he 
understood  the  people  better  than  his  rivals,  and 
could  benefit  them  more. 

When  he  received  the  summons  of  his  sovereign, 
he  felt  not  only  the  elation  of  a  politician  flattered  by 
being  called  to  serve  the  Crown  in  a  difficult  crisis, 
but  something  also  of  the  patriotism  which  is  ready 
to  confront  a  dangerous  issue  for  sake  of  the  country. 
The  moment  was  critical.  He  knew  that  if  the 
people  became  more  excited  and  were  refused  the 
demand  for  the  burial  of  Illyris  in  the  city,  their 
rage  would  become  ungovernable,  and,  though  they 
would  be  probably  worsted  eventually,  they  were 
certainly  in  the  mood  to  face  the  troops  ;  and  it  was 
possible  that  the  troops  might  go  over  to  the  popular 
side.  Kantakuzene  knew  that  there  was  much  secret 
disaffection  in  the  barracks  of  Helios.  If  Othyris 
should  cease  to  be  neutral,  and  should  come  out  into 
the  streets  and  take  their  head,  it  was  probable, 
thought  the  statesman,  that  there  would  be  civil  war 
of  the  most  bitter  kind —  of  the  populace  against  the 
ruling  power. 

To  avert  this  seemed  to  Kantakuzene  his  own 
supreme  duty.  The  time  had  been  when  he  would 
have  welcomed  such  a  conflict,  and  have  done  his 
best  to  conclude  it  in  favour  of  the  populace.  But 


368  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

that  time  was  past  ;  he  had  been  Prime  Minister 
before  now ;  he  desired  to  be  so  again.  To  risk, 
instead,  revolution  beside  a  young  man  who  was  a 
poet  rather  than  a  politician,  whose  scruples  were  as 
many  as  the  sands  of  the  sea,  and  whose  courage 
was  constantly  being  checked  by  the  hesitations  of  his 
conscience,  never  entered  the  mind  of  the  deputy 
for  Concordia. 

There  are  transmigrations  which  are  against  nature. 
The  revolutionist  may  develop  into  the  Minister. 
The  Minister  never  becomes  again  the  revolutionist. 
So  Kantakuzene,  on  receiving  the  summons  from 
the  King,  hastened  to  the  Soleia. 

Kantakuzene  was  by  instinct  and  early  training  a 
special  pleader  :  he  had  been  in  early  years  remarked 
for  the  skill,  the  suavity,  the  courtesy,  the  persuasive- 
ness of  his  speeches  in  the  courts  of  justice.  He  had 
brought  into  political  life  that  shrewd  and  subtle 
management  of  men  which  he  had  learned  at  the 
Bar. 

A  bourgeois,  a  notary's  son,  a  self-made  man, 
there  was  a  certain  awe  even  for  him  in  princes,  a 
certain  spell  which  magnetised  him  momentarily  ; 
but  he  was  never  venire  a  terre  before  royalty,  like 
Deliornis  or  Soranis  ;  and  when  his  momentary  trepi- 
dation passed  off,  which  it  did  soon,  he  was  master 
of  himself,  and  at  times,  as  he  was  now,  master  of 
them. 

He  had  not  been  a  famous  advocate  without 
knowing  how  to  move  his  fellow-men  by  the  mere 
charm  and  force  of  words.  The  King  and  the  Crown 
Prince  were  indeed  not  susceptible  to  eloquence,  but 
his  adroit  speech  reached  to  the  hidden  sources  of 
their  secret  fears,  and  conjured  up  before  their  dull 


xxiir  HELIANTHUS  369 

minds  that  vision  of  the  Red  Spectre  which  haunts 
at  night  the  pillows  whereon  crowned  heads  uneasy 
lie. 

The  populace  was  to  them  both  but  as  a  worm  on 
which  to  set  their  heel ;  but  Kantakuzene  made  them 
reluctantly  realise  that  the  worm  might  turn  into  a 
viper,  nay,  even  into  a  python ;  and  that  the  heel 
even  of  Achilles  was  vulnerable  in  the  modern  suc- 
cessors of  Achilles.  They  were  both  clothed  in  the 
impenetrable  armour  of  pride,  of  prejudice,  of  vanity, 
of  caste,  of  ignorance  ;  but  the  shafts  of  his  ingenious 
and  deferential  words  pierced  the  joints  of  their 
armour,  and  made  the  network  of  nerves  beneath 
the  armour  thrill. 

In  the  Alps,  at  certain  seasons,  a  single  shot  fired 
may  bring  down  an  avalanche  which  may  bury 
villages.  Kantakuzene  used  the  metaphor,  and  made 
them  feel  that  the  season  was  come,  the  avalanche 
above  their  heads,  the  atmosphere  surcharged  with 
danger  of  no  common  kind. 

The  heir  to  the  throne  would  have  dared  all, 
would  have  fired  the  shot,  though  the  avalanche  had 

*  D 

engulfed  him;  but  the  actual  occupant  of  the  throne 
was  more  moved  by  the  impending  danger  :  under  his 
stolid  and  cold  mask  he  was  afraid  of  what  might 
happen  —  he  did  not  wish  to  go  and  live  on  his 
millions  in  a  foreign  country  like  a  retired  stock- 
broker ;  he  knew  well  that  the  man  who  has  reigned 
is  on  ceasing  to  reign  dwarfed  and  crippled  for  the 
rest  of  his  natural  life. 

He  did  not  believe  in  the  possibility  of  his  own 
deposition,  his  own  exile  ;  but  he  could  not  altogether 
resist  the  impression  of  the  alarm  which  Kantakuzene 
so  skilfully  suggested  without  ever  giving  it  a  shape 


370  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

which  could  offend.  A  vision  rose  before  him  of 
his  son  Elim  chosen  as  President  of  a  Helianthine 
Republic,  even  as  Henri  d'Orleans,  had  he  had  more 
spirit  for  combat  or  less  loyalty  to  his  family,  might 
have  become  president  of  his  nation  and  master  of 
her  fate. 

Willingly,  and  with  fierce  pleasure  in  his  slow 
veins,  would  the  King  have  arrested  his  son,  have 
called  out  the  troops,  have  raked  the  streets  with 
musketry  fire,  and  blocked  the  squares  with  cannon  ; 
but  the  serum  of  fear  was  infiltrated  into  his  veins 
by  an  accomplished  adept  in  mental  therapeutics  ; 
and  Kantakuzene,  with  his  flute-like  voice  and  per- 
suasive speech,  was,  momentarily  at  least,  his  master. 
Jealousy  and  fear,  two  doubtful  counsellors,  made  the 
King  estimate  the  popularity  of  his  second  son  as  a 
far  more  potent  factor  than  it  actually  was.  He 
attributed  to  Elim  projects  and  ambitions  which  Elim 
had  never  harboured,  and  which  were  indeed  wholly 
alien  to  his  temperament.  A  mind  which  sees  every 
side  of  each  question,  which  is  doubtful  of  the  wisdom 
of  any  step,  which  is  divided  between  emotions  and 
opinions,  between  censure  and  sympathy,  is  not  a 
mind  to  conceive  and  execute  hardy  and  daring 
schemes  of  self-aggrandisement :  such  a  mind,  as  it 
shrinks  from  decision,  is  untempted  by  lust  of  power, 
since  in  all  power  all  action  must  be  swift,  sharp, 
unhesitating,  and  certain  of  itself. 

Othyris  would  have  been  fully  as  reluctant  to 
head  a  republic  as  he  would  have  been  unwilling  to 
reign  ;  he  abhorred  responsibility,  and  had  no  belief 
in  his  own  wisdom  to  sustain  him  under  it.  This  is 
not  the  temperament  of  ambitious  agitators.  But  the 
King  had  never  had  either  the  inclination  or  capacity 


xxm  HELIANTHUS  371 

to  study  and  understand  his  son's  character,  and  to 
his  narrow  and  angular  intelligence  the  intricacies  and 
scruples  of  such  a  character  were  not  even  conceivable ; 
he  only  saw  in  the  nation's  favourite  a  rebel  in  public 
life  and  a  rival  in  private  life.  The  King  was  afraid  ; 
he  was  in  the  power  of  a  son  whom  he  had  threatened, 
ridiculed,  coerced,  hated  ever  since  the  day  that  he 
had  shot  the  eagle  to  wound  the  tender  heart  of  a 
child.  He  was  afraid — afraid  of  exposure,  of  scandal, 
of  losing  before  the  sight  of  men  that  reputation  of 
cleanliness  and  of  chastity  which  he  had  maintained 
so  carefully  throughout  his  life. 

Kantakuzene  attributed  the  evident  irresolution, 
which  had  succeeded  the  dogged  obstinacy  and 
impenetrability  of  the  King's  attitude,  to  that  dread 
of  the  Red  Spectre  of  which  Othyris  had  spoken ;  a 
spectre  which  haunts  the  sleep,  and  dominates  the 
waking  thoughts  of  all  potentates.  '  He  is  afraid,' 
he  thought.  '  Will  he  yield  to  fear  ? ' 

Kantakuzene  was  not  a  vain  man  ;  his  self-esteem 
never  obscured  his  judgment;  therefore  he  did  not 
attribute  to  his  own  persuasion  the  gradual  change 
which  he  perceived  come  over  the  King's  countenance 
and  attitude.  John  of  Gunderode  rose  out  of  his 
chair  and  paced  the  carpet  with  steps  which  indicated 
an  uneasy  mind  ;  his  sullen  features  had  on  them  a 
transient  expression  of  anxiety  ;  he  smoked  feverishly, 
throwing  aside  his  cigarettes  scarcely  consumed  ;  his 
hands  were  thrust  into  his  trouser  pockets,  his  eyes 
were  veiled  under  their  heavy  lids.  The  Crown 
Prince  looked  at  him  furtively  in  astonishment,  not 
daring  to  speak. 

Kantakuzene  thought,  *  Is  it  possible  that  he  is 
wavering?  Is  it  possible  that-he  is  afraid? '  There 


372  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

were  hesitation  and  indecision  indicated  in  the  move- 
ments of  the  monarch. 

Precisely  as  the  chimes  and  clocks  of  the  city 
sounded  the  second  hour  of  the  day,  Demetrius 
Kantakuzenewas  ushered  into  the  presence  of  Othyris. 
Othyris  laid  down  the  volume  he  read,  and  the 
cigarette  he  smoked ;  he  was  tranquil ;  he  seemed 
even  indifferent. 

'Your  Excellency  is  punctual.  Has  the  struggle 
been  hard  ? ' 

He  saw  that  it  had  been  hard.  The  countenance 
of  the  Minister  was  worn,  pallid,  harassed,  drawn. 

His  voice  was  almost  inaudible,  and  his  breath 
was  drawn  in  quick  gasps  as  he  answered :  — 

c  I  have  had  the  honour,  sir,  to  be  ordered  to 
convey  to  the  public  the  news  that  His  Majesty  the 
King  graciously  consents  to  honour  the  body  of 
Platon  Illyris  with  sepulture  in  the  Pantheon,  called 
by  the  populace  the  "  House  of  the  Immortals." 

'  I  congratulate  you,'  he  said  to  Kantakuzene. 
4  You  have  won  a  bloodless  victory  where  defeat 
would  have  cost  much  bloodshed.' 

'  Sir,'  said  Kantakuzene,  c  thank  God  that  your 
life  is  not  to  be  thrown  away  in  its  youth.  Your 
motives  would  never  have  been  understood  or  your 
sacrifices  appreciated.' 

'  That  would  not  have  mattered,'  replied  Othyris. 
f  What  would  have  mattered  is  that  there  would  have 
been  civil  war  in  Helios.' 

Kantakuzene  sighed,  as  an  overstrained  horse 
sighs  when  reaching  the  summit  of  a  hill  of  stones, 
its  sinews  swollen  and  its  lungs  choked,  resting  with- 
out rest. 


xxiii  HELIANTHUS  373 

He  had  won  this  battle  in  the  privacy  of  the  King's 
closet;  but  all  the  other  battles  with  party,  with 
opposition,  with  colleagues,  with  supporters,  with 
the  Senate  and  the  Press,  with  the  committees  and 
the  constituencies,  were  all  yet  to  be  fought.  To 
Othyris  the  matter  seemed  at  an  end;  but  to  the 
politician  the  endless  coil  of  difficulties  appeared  as 
yet  scarcely  touched,  and  although  he  was  victorious, 
he  thought  like  Wellington  that  victory  was  the 
next  saddest  thing  to  a  defeat. 

1  What  made  him  yield  ? '  asked  Othyris. 

4 1  cannot  tell,  sir.' 

Kantakuzene  was  too  adroit  to  couple  fear  with 
the  royal  name.  Othyris  thought  it  was  dread  of 
the  Red  Spectre ;  he  never  supposed  that  it  was 
dread  of  himself.  The  motive,  however,  did  not 
matter  ;  what  was  of  import  was  that  the  desire  of  the 
people  was  granted.  He  scarcely  gave  a  thought 
to  the  fact  that  his  own  life  had  been  spared. 

Kantakuzene,  though  only  Prime  Minister-elect, 
had  acted  with  promptitude  and  temerity.  He 
had  given  orders  that,  so  long  as  the  multitudes 
remained  only  harmlessly  excited,  they  should  not 
be  molested,  but  that  upon  the  slightest  sign  of  dis- 
turbance or  menace  the  repression  should  be  severe. 
The  people,  however,  gave  no  excuse  for  such 
severity.  They  were  gratified,  grateful,  orderly, 
though  effervescent  and  emotional,  and  crowded 
together  in  the  streets  chanting  with  tears  and 
smiles  their  national  songs,  and  shouting  that  for 
once  unchastised  Hymn  of  Eos,  which  had  roused 
their  fathers'  fathers  in  dungeon  and  cell,  on  the 
benches  of  galleys,  and  by  the  cold  hearths  of  rural 
cabins. 


374  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

By  the  unconscious  obedience  to  that  magnetic 
current  which  moves  a  crowd,  the  bulk  of  the  people 
had  come  towards  and  into  the  square  in  which 
the  residence  of  Othyris  was  situated,  and  were 
shouting  his  name  before  its  long  and  imposing 
frontage  of  pale  fawn-coloured  marble. 

His  gentlemen,  sorely  disquieted,  conversed  to- 
gether in  troubled  tones.  Othyris  was  alone  in  his 
studio,  where  no  one  of  them  ever  dared  to  follow 
him  except  by  his  command.  Through  the  long 
perspective  of  rooms  which  opened  one  out  of 
another,  they  could  see  the  lights  glittering  in  the 
Square,  and  the  sound  of  the  people's  outcries  echoed 
to  them  through  the  open  windows  of  the  last  salon. 
Would  the  crowd  disperse  quietly,  they  wondered,  if 
no  answer  were  vouchsafed  to  it  ?  The  gates  stood 
wide  open,  as  usual ;  the  porter  with  his  gilded  stick, 
and  the  two  sentries,  the  only  guardians  of  the  build- 
ing, would  be  easily  overpowered  if  the  mob  should 
become  angry ;  within  the  palace  there  was  a  crowd 
of  servants,  but  those  would  be  of  no  use  for  de- 
fence. The  courtiers  grew  nervous  as  the  cries  of 
the  citizens  became  more  insistent. 

Like  the  Scots  of  old  they  agreed  that  some  one 
should  bell  the  cat,  should  enter  their  master's  atelier 
and  give  the  alarm  ;  but  no  one  of  them  cared  to 
accept  that  office.  Every  few  minutes  one  or  other 
of  them  walked  through  the  rooms  and  looked  from 
behind  the  draperies  of  one  of  the  windows  on  to 
the  piazza  below.  In  the  centre  of  it  was  the  vast 
fountain,  a  work  of  the  sixteenth  century,  placed 
between  the  statues  of  the  Dioscuri ;  dolphins  and 
sea-horses  plunging ;  adolescents  astride  on  them, 
laughing ;  towering  columns  of  water  shooting  up- 


xxui  HELIANTHUS  375 

wards,  turning  in  the  air,  falling  downwards  in 
torrents  of  foam.  In  the  electric  light  directed  on 
it,  its  marbles  and  its  waters  were  one  mass  of  silver. 
Around  it,  and  filling  the  whole  square,  were  the 
many-coloured  and  motley  representatives  of  the 
various  arts,  and  crafts,  and  labours,  and  degrees  of 
industry  and  poverty  which  made  up  the  democracy 
of  Helios.  They  entirely  filled  the  great  space ;  on 
two  sides  were  palaces  used  for  public  offices ;  at  the 
opposite  end  to  that  of  Othyris  there  were  public 
gardens  with  dense  tall  trees  and  palms  of  untold  age. 
The  populace  made  that  hoarse  ominous  sound, 
like  that  of  a  sullen  sea,  which  is  its  habitual  note 
both  in  joy  and  in  rage.  But  ever  and  again  above 
the  clamour  there  rose  a  clearer  call  :  it  was  the  call 
on  the  name  of  Elim  by  the  people  who  loved  him. 

The  gentlemen,  who  one  by  one  gazed  down  on 
the  spectacle  from  behind  the  curtains,  were  alarmed 
and  impressed  ;  the  numbers  of  the  crowd  increased 
with  every  moment  as  new-comers  poured  in  through 
the  various  streets  which  led  to  it. 

The  cries  grew  more  turbulent,  the  press  more 
feverish ;  the  chanting  of  the  Hymn  of  Eos  was 
crossed  by  the  refrain  of  the  Gallian  hymn  of  revolu- 
tion and  the  translated  strophes  of  northern  odes  to 
Labour  and  to  Anarchy.  They  were  in  that  mood 
when,  if  the  will  and  the  power  to  direct  them  be 
there,  such  throngs  can  be  led  to  any  excesses,  to 
any  crimes,  through  a  sea  of  blood. 

The  courtiers  consulted  together  :  Othyris  must 
be  told,  they  again  agreed,  but  by  whom  ? 

f  He  must  hear  them  in  his  studio,'  said  one  of 
the  gentlemen.  f  If  he  choose  to  come  out  to  them 
he  will  do  so.' 


376  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

In  their  own  thoughts  they  all  blamed  him  deeply 
for  his  encouragement  of  the  demands  of  the  people, 
who,  in  their  estimation,  were  but  the  mere  tools  of 
the  socialists. 

As  they  whispered  together,  and  the  shouts  of  the 
throngs  echoed  through  the  great,  silent,  lighted 
suite  of  apartments,  the  door  which  opened  into  the 
corridor  leading  to  his  study  was  pushed  back,  and 
Othyris  himself  came  towards  them.  They  were 
surprised  to  see  how  pale  and  agitated  his  counte- 
nance was,  for  they  knew  that  the  traditional  courage 
of  the  royal  House  was  in  no  member  of  it  greater 
than  in  himself.  But  with  a  firm  step  he  passed 
by  them,  saluted  them  by  a  courteous  gesture,  and 
went  through  the  rooms  to  those  end  windows 
which  looked  on  the  piazza. 

The  windows  opened  on  to  a  large  balcony.  He 
passed  out  on  to  it,  and  stood  looking  down  upon 
the  populace.  He  was  recognised  at  once,  and 
greeted  with  the  passionate  warmth  of  a  southern 
people.  He  waited  a  little  while  for  the  first  vehe- 
mence of  their  welcome  to  spend  itself,  then  he 
advanced  to  the  marble  balustrade  and  held  up  his 
hand.  In  the  comparative  silence  which  ensued  his 
voice  reached  clear  and  unwavering  to  the  strained 
ears  of  the  expectant  throngs.  He  could  have  done 
with  them  in  that  moment  whatever  he  had  chosen. 

c  My  friends,'  he  said  to  them,  ( I  thank  you  for 
your  kindness,  but  no  honour  is  due  to  me  ;  I  my- 
self was  powerless.  Take  your  gratitude  whither  it 
is  due  —  to  one  who,  possessing  the  power,  had 
also  the  will  to  do  that  which  you  wished  —  our 
sovereign  lord  the  King.' 

It  was  loyalty,  it  was  filial  duty,  it  was  the  fealty 


xxin  HELIANTHUS  377 

of  a  gentleman  to  his  race ;  but  it  was  not  what  the 
people  desired  or  expected.  An  angry  murmur  rose 
from  their  restless  ranks. 

*  I  have  no  other  bidding  for  you,  my  friends.     If 
you  believe  that  you  owe  me  anything,  obey  me  now/ 
he  said,  and  stood  still  a  moment  to  see  what  effect 
his  words  had  on  them.     He  felt  as  if  he  betrayed 
them.     He  felt  untrue  to  his  own  faiths,  and  to  their 
faith  in  him.     But  what  other  course  was  open  to 
him  ?     He  could  not  lead  them  to  the  siege  of  the 
Soleia. 

A  brawny  giant  from  the  docks,  naked  to  the 
waist,  with  a  red  cap  on  his  black  poll,  shouted  back 
to  him  :  — 

*  To  hell  with  John  of  Gunderode  !     It  is  you  we 
want ! ' 

1  You  !  You  !  You  !  We  want  you  ! '  the 
whole  multitude  echoed  as  with  one  voice.  But 
already  Othyris  had  gone  back  into  the  room,  and 
they  saw  him  no  more ;  nor  did  he  return  to  the 
balcony,  though  with  impassioned  entreaties  and 
imprecations  they  implored  him  to  come  out  to  them 
once  more. 

Two  agents  of  police,  supple  and  strong  as 
pythons,  had  glided  through  the  closely-pressed 
ranks  and  seized  the  man  of  the  docks  and  dragged 
him  away  out  of  sight,  with  an  action  so  rapid  and 
noiseless  that  the  people  scarcely  realised  what  had 
been  done,  and  had  neither  time  nor  chance  for 
rescue. 

When  Kantakuzene  congratulated  him  with 
warmth  and  gratitude  on  his  answer  to  the  populace, 
Othyris  received  his  compliments  with  great  coldness. 

*  Surely  I  could  have  done  nothing  else  ?  *  he  said 


378  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

with  curt  disdain.  '  You  would  not  have  had  me 
lead  them  to  the  siege  of  the  Arsenal  or  the  sack  of 
the  Soleia  ? ' 

The  Minister  thought,  but  did  not  say,  that  it 
was  precisely  these  things  which  many  would  have 
expected  from  a  prince  in  open  antagonism  with  the 
Crown. 

He  himself  was  not  a  little  astonished  at  the 
inertia,  as  he  considered  it,  of  a  young  man  who  was 
avowedly  a  malcontent,  and,  as  all  knew,  on  ill  terms 
with  his  royal  father. 

'  He  has  had  his  opportunity,'  he  thought,  *  and 
he  has  thrown  it  away  ;  it  will  not  come  back  again. 
Blood  would  have  run  like  water,  of  course ;  but  it  is 
just  possible  that  if  he  had  put  himself  at  the  head  of 
the  people  he  might  have  made  himself  master  of  the 
city  and  the  throne.  The  King  grows  moreunpopular 
every  year,  and  the  army  is  mined  by  socialism.  We 
could  not  be  perfectly  sure  of  its  obedience  in  any 
serious  conflict  with  the  populace.' 

And  Kantakuzene,  who  had  a  pleasant  sense  of 
humour,  laughed  a  little  to  himself  as  he  imagined 
his  august  master,  as  he  might  have  seen  him,  hurrying 
out  in  travelling  cap  and  mackintosh,  by  a  side  door 
of  the  palace,  in  the  grey  of  dawn  or  in  the  dead  of 
night,  and  getting  on  board  a  steamship  to  go  where 
his  millions  were  safely  awaiting  him  over  the  seas. 
The  Crown  Prince,  he  thought,  would  have  stayed 
and  would  have  fought  like  a  bull-terrier  to  the  end 
in  such  an  event. 

As  it  was,  the  demonstration  ended  harmlessly ; 
on  the  morrow  the  people  returned  peaceably  to  their 
work.  They  were  only  partly  satisfied,  but  reckoned 
that  half  a  loaf  was  better  than  no  bread,  and  to  have 


xxin  HELIANTHUS  379 

had  their  will  in  one  thing  argued  well  to  them  for 
the  future. 

The  person  who  gained  most  by  the  events  was 
the  person  to  whom  they  had  seemed  most  threaten- 
ing. Kantakuzene  became  once  more  as  popular  with 
the  masses  as  he  had  always  been  in  the  days  of  his 
early  manhood.  To  his  influence  the  people  attributed 
their  victory,  and  to  his  influence  the  bourgeoisie 
attributed  the  peaceful  issue  of  a  dangerous  move- 
ment. Only  the  King  and  the  Crown  Prince,  who 
had  always  disliked,  now  hated  him ;  he  had  forced 
royalty  into  concessions  to  the  popular  will. 

The  authorities  were  still  in  great  alarm.  The 
troops  were  still  confined  to  barracks.  The  number 
of  guards  in  plain  clothes  with  revolvers  hidden  was 
very  large.  But  the  elaborate  military  precautions 
taken  were  in  a  great  measure  concealed,  and  that 
portion  of  the  people  which  had  been  concerned  in  the 
demonstration  of  the  previous  days  was  too  elated  to 
be  alarmed  or  to  take  umbrage  at  such  precautions 
against  itself  as  it  perceived.  They  were  proud  of 
their  own  victory,  with  that  thoughtless,  inflated, 
dangerous  conceit  which  in  all  ages  and  in  all  climes 
throws  the  plebs  into  the  arms  of  its  antagonists  at 
the  critical  moments  when  calmness  and  self-restraint 
might  give  it  a  chance  of  victory. 


CHAPTER  XXIV 

THE  homage  of  the  public  to  Platon  Illyris  on  the 
morrow  was  without  pomp,  or  parade,  or  military 
spectacle,  but  its  simplicity  made  its  grandeur,  and 
the  crowds  which  followed  the  bier  from  the  hillside 
and  the  seashore  across  the  city  to  the  mausoleum 
were  worthy  of  his  memory.  There  was  no  music, 
there  were  no  troops,  there  were  no  cannon,  no 
priests,  no  banners,  no  muffled  drums,  no  war-horses 
slowly  pacing  under  plumed  riders  and  broidered 
saddle-cloths  :  there  were  only  the  people  of  Helios, 
in  thousands  and  tens  of  thousands,  following  the 
plain  deal  coffin  in  dead  silence,  for  the  Hymn  of 
Eos  had  been  again  forbidden  by  special  proclama- 
tion, and  the  people  would  have  no  other. 

From  far  and  near,  from  maritime  village  and 
mountain  hamlet,  the  men  and  women  of  Helianthus 
flocked  in  masses  through  the  gates,  and  swelled  the 
populace  of  the  various  quarters  of  the  town ;  a 
torrent  of  multi-coloured  hues,  of  silent  but  im- 
passioned life,  choking  down  in  silence  in  their  throats 
the  forbidden  chant  which  rose  to  the  lips  of  all. 

The  troops  were  shut  up  in  their  barracks  ready 
for  any  emergency ;  strong  forces  of  guards,  and 
police,  and  mounted  carabineers,  were  drawn  up  along 
the  line  of  route ;  the  gates  and  the  windows  of  the 

380 


CHAP,  xxiv          HELIANTHUS  381 

palaces  of  the  aristocracy  and  the  plutocracy  were  all 
closed,  but  in  no  sign  of  respect,  only  out  of  a  great 
fear. 

As  the  funeral  passed  through  the  Square  of  the 
Dioscuri  under  the  lofty  palms,  by  the  falling  foun- 
tains, Othyris  rode  out  of  the  courtyard  of  his 
palace  and  placed  himself  beside  the  bier ;  he  was  in 
full  uniform ;  he  wore  crape  upon  his  arm  ;  the  sun 
shone  on  the  fairness  of  his  face  and  hair. 

An  immense  shout  of  welcome  and  applause 
greeted  the  courage  of  his  act. 

He  checked  the  tumultuoijs  cheering  with  a  gesture, 
entreating  and  commanding  silence ;  then  rode  on 
beside  the  coffin  at  a  slow  pace,  the  smothered  out- 
cries of  homage  and  admiration  rolling  down  the  air 
like  the  hoarse  mutterings  of  a  storm.  The  solemnity 
of  the  errand  on  which  they  went,  the  impression  of 
awe  and  repentance  which  was  on  the  souls  of  the 
masses  that  day  alone  restrained  the  populace  of 
Helios  from  proclaiming  their  will  to  have  him  as 
their  lord,  to  be  ruled  by  him  and  by  him  alone. 

The  palace  of  Kantakuzene  was  but  a  few  dozen 
yards  distant  from  the  Square  of  the  Dioscuri.  The 
dense  crowds  passed  under  its  walls.  From  a  case- 
ment, hidden  by  growing  plants  climbing  over  its 
grating,  Kantakuzene  looked  out  on  the  throng  and 
saw  the  solitary  rider  on  the  black  horse. 

'  Good  heavens,  what  imprudence  ! '  he  murmured. 
*  If  I  had  dreamed  of  it,  I  would  have  kept  him  in 
by  force  !  ' 

In  his  horror  and  apprehension  the  sweat  of  fear 
and  of  amaze  stood  in  chill  drops  upon  his  forehead. 
Never,  he  knew,  never  would  John  of  Gunderode 
pardon  either  Elim  or  himself. 


382  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

The  bier  and  the  rider  beside  it  passed  out  of 
sight  down  the  street,  soon  hidden  by  the  projecting 
balconies,  and  sculptures,  and  lamp-irons  of  its 
ancient  houses.  The  crowds  continued  long  to  tramp 
through  the  street,  until  the  last  stragglers  had  passed. 
There  is  no  sound  so  ominous  as  the  passing  of  a 
multitude.  As  he  heard  it,  Kantakuzene  bowed  his 
head  qn  his  hands  and  sighed  wearily.  This  demon- 
stration might  close  peacefully,  or  it  might  end  in 
bloodshed  ;  but  whatever  might  be  its  issue  he  knew 
that  the  germs  of  a  great  peril  were  in  it.  All  the 
citizens  of  Helios  seemed  to  be  massed  along  the 
route  of  the  funeral  procession,  and  the  whole  work- 
ing population  of  the  city  was  abroad  ;  at  the  win- 
dows of  their  dwellings  only  the  aged  and  the  very 
young,  left  at  home,  looked  out  in  impatient  en- 
thusiasm ;  the  white  marble  dust  rose  in  the  air  in 
dense  clouds,  the  tread  of  the  many  thousands  of  feet 
was  like  the  marching  of  an  army.  From  the  Gate 
of  Olives  to  the  opposite  hill  on  which  the  mausoleum 
stood  was  a  distance  of  three  miles  and  more ;  there 
was  not  a  foot  of  it  which  was  not  occupied.  Such 
movements  have,  as  a  rule,  but  little  worth  ;  populous 
cities  send  forth  their  masses  to  welcome  a  despot, 
to  cheer  a  general,  to  gape  at  a  bridegroom,  to  ap- 
plaud the  legions  who  return  from  an  unjust  war. 
But  these  multitudes  were  repentant ;  they  were  as 
sons  who  mourned  a  father  they  had  long  neglected  ; 
there  were  spontaneity,  sincerity,  remorse,  in  their 
souls,  and  their  hearts  beat  in  the  unison  of  a  pas- 
sionate, if  an  evanescent,  adoration  of  a  dead  god. 

It  was  towards  the  close  of  the  warm  and  fragrant 
afternoon  that  Ilia  Illyris  sat  beside  the  stone  well 


xxiv  HELIANTHUS  383 

amongst  the  columbines  and  roses,  wondering  how 
the  day  had  gone ;  whether  peace  or  strife  had  been 
the  escort  of  the  plain  pinewood  coffin  which  had 
been  borne  away  from  Aquilegia  at  daybreak  by  the 
people  of  Helios.  Janos  had  not  returned. 

She  looked  up  as  she  heard  a  step  on  the  dry 
grass  of  the  path  which  led  up  to  her  house  and  she 
saw  Othyris. 

He  had  changed  his  clothes  in  the  city,  and  had 
come  thither  as  soon  as  he  had  been  able  to  free  him- 
self from  the  enthusiasm  of  the  crowds,  when  the 
bronze  gates  of  the  House  of  the  Immortals  had 
closed  again,  after  having  opened  to  receive  the 
coffin  of  Illyris. 

He  stood  in  the  shadows  of  the  boughs  at  a  little 
distance  from  her  ;  his  head  was  uncovered,  he  looked 
pale  and  tired,  for  he  had  eaten  nothing  all  day  ;  his 
ears  were  deaf  with  the  noise  of  the  crowds,  his  eyes 
were  hot  and  dry  with  the  dust  of  the  streets ;  but 
he  was  proud  of  the  tidings  which  he  brought  her, 
glad  that  he  could  prove  to  her  his  own  sincerity 
and  good  faith. 

c  All  has  passed  well  and  with  order,'  he  said  to 
her.  *  I  went  with  the  people  to  the  mausoleum. 
He  lies  with  the  great  men  of  Helianthus  ;  the 
greatest  of  them  all.' 

His  voice  was  low  and  broken  from  fatigue  and 
from  emotion. 

She  rose  and  went  towards  him  in  the  warm  amber 
light  of  the  late  sunset  with  a  sweet  and  gracious 
look  upon  her  face,  and  she  put  out  her  hand  to  him 
with  a  gesture  of  which  queens  might  have  envied 
the  dignity  and  the  grace. 

*  I   thank  you,  sir,'  she  said,  in  a  softer  tone  than 


384  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

he  had  ever  heard  from  her.  f  I  did  you  injustice  ; 
I  ask  your  pardon.' 

Othyris  bowed  very  low  and  touched  her  hand 
timidly  with  his  lips  as  though  she  were  his  suzerain 
and  he  a  vassal.  He  did  not  speak.  All  words  ap- 
peared to  him  too  poor,  too  trivial. 

c  I  thank  you,  sir,'  she  said  again.  (  You  have 
done  a  noble  action.' 

She  sat  down  again  on  the  old  marble  seat  against 
the  wall  of  the  house  as  he  remained  standing ;  his 
emotion  was  great,  and  he  was  afraid  lest  by  a  word 
too  warm,  a  glance  too  ardent,  he  might  scare  away, 
like  a  frightened  bird,  her  first  movement  of  con- 
fidence and  sympathy. 

cYou  know  the  English  poet's  line,'  she  said: 
f  "  After  lifes  fitful  fever  he  sleeps  well"  That 
Platon  Illyris  sleeps  well,  in  honoured  sepulchre,  and 
in  sight  of  the  people,  is  due  to  you,  to  you  alone. 
I  thank  you  ;  I  thank  you  infinitely.' 

*  The  Pantheon  was  his  right.    The  instinct  of 
the  people  told  them  that.' 

( Yes  ;  but  they  could  have  had  no  power  to  im- 
pose their  will  upon  the  Crown  had  it  not  been  for 
you.' 

He  could  not  contradict  what  was  obvious. 

c  I  hope  it  has  not  caused  dissension  between  you 
and  your  father  ? ' 

'  There  is  seldom  anything  else  between  the  King 
and  myself.' 

{  Who  induced  the  King  to  yield  ? ' 

*  Kantakuzene.' 

e  Kantakuzene  !  A  renegade  !  A  turn-coat !  A 
man  all  things  to  all  men  ! ' 

( A  successful  politician  —  yes.' 


xxiv  HELIANTHUS  385 

c  Is  it  true  that  you  said  you  would  not  live  un- 
less your  promise  to  the  people  were  kept  by  the 
Crown  ? ' 

t  Who  told  you  that  ? ' 

f  Janos  went  down  into  the  city,  and  he  heard  it 
there.' 

c  I  cannot  tell  how  any  one  could  know  it.  It  was 
said  only  to  Kantakuzene.' 

{  But  it  is  true  ? ' 

1  Yes,  it  is  true.  How  could  I  have  lived  dis- 
credited and  dishonoured  in  your  sight,  and  in  the 
sight  of  my  nation  ? ' 

A  radiance  of  admiration,  of  sympathy,  and  of 
comprehension  lightened  her  face. 

'  You  should  have  been  an  Illyris ! '  she  said,  in 
that  pride  of  race  which  is  so  far  above  mere  vanity 
or  egotism. 

Othyris  smiled  involuntarily.  No  other  woman 
would  have  spoken  of  her  race  as  greater  than  his 
own. 

'  Would  that  I  had  been ! '  he  murmured.  '  I 
should  be  nearer  to  you.' 

He  regretted  the  last  words  as  soon  as  he  had 
uttered  them,  for  they  chilled  and  alarmed  her,  though 
she  took  no  notice  of  them  ;  but  the  warmer,  more 
sympathetic,  more  intimate  manner  she  had  hitherto 
shown  was  frozen  back  into  her  usual  reserve. 

c  She  thinks  I  take  advantage  of  her  gratitude,' 
he  reflected ;  and  he  regretted  having  thus  alarmed 
her. 

They  were  both  silent.  The  sun  shone  on  the 
old  cream-hued  marble  of  the  house  wall,  the  green 
trails  of  the  Madonna's  herb  growing  in  its  fissures, 
the  silvery  leaves  of  the  olives,  the  fair  classic 

2  C 


386  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

profile  of  Ilia  Illyris  and  the  sombre  black  folds  of 
her  gown.  Othyris  stood  and  looked  at  her  with  all 
his  soul  speaking  in  his  eyes ;  but  her  eyes  were 
looking  downward  on  the  rough  grass  at  her  feet  and 
she  did  not  see,  because  she  did  not  wish  to  see,  what 
his  would  have  told  her. 

She  was  distressed  though  she  did  not  show  any 
distress.  She  was  divided  between  her  gratitude  to 
him  and  her  fear  of  him  —  gratitude  for  his  acts,  fear 
of  his  passion.  What  he  had  done  appealed  to  her 
in  the  strongest  way  ;  to  her  sympathy,  to  her  family 
pride,  to  her  admiration  of  heroic  and  patriotic  con- 
duct ;  but  she  was  afraid  of  the  feeling  for  herself 
which  it  was  impossible  to  ignore,  even  though  it 
had  been  as  yet  scarcely  crystallised  into  words. 

The  Gunderode  had  ever  been  fatal  to  the  Illyris. 
He  who  had  been  carried  to  his  grave  in  the  Pan- 
theon had  rued  the  day  when  he  had  trusted  in  the 
monarch  by  whose  side  he  now  lay  in  the  community 
of  death.  All  her  heart  went  out  to  the  young  man 
who  stood  before  her,  for  his  devotion  to  the  dead, 
for  his  courage  in  great  peril,  for  his'  loyalty  to  his 
word  and  to  the  people ;  but  in  his  relations  to 
herself  she  doubted  him,  she  shrank  from  him,  she 
feared  him,  she  saw  in  him  only  the  treachery  of  his 
family  to  hers. 

She  rose  from  the  seat  under  the  house  wall,  and 
moved  towards  the  archway  of  the  entrance. 

*  Believe  me,  sir,'  she  said  in  a  low  tone,  her  eyes 
still  looking  away  from  him,  ( I  feel  most  deeply, 
most  gratefully,  all  that  you  have  done  for  the  sake 
of  the  dead  and  in  the  defence  of  the  populace ;  I 
admire  your  actions,  I  respect  them,  I  honour  them  ; 
but,  as  I  have  told  you  before  now,  there  can  be  no 


xxiv  HELIANTHUS  387 

friendship  between  you  and  me.  Even  for  you  to 
come  here,  now  that  he  is  no  more  with  me,  is  not 
possible.  There  is  a  gulf  that  must  ever  yawn 
between  us.  You  have  done  your  utmost  to  atone 
for  your  grandsire's  crimes ;  but  they  were  written 
in  blood,  the  blood  of  the  people,  and  the  blood  of 
my  fathers.  Nothing  can  wash  them  out  —  for  me. 
You  regret  them,  but  you  cannot  efface  them  by  any 
courage  or  nobility  of  your  own.  I  have  said  so  to 
you  many  times.' 

(  You  have,'  said  Othyris,  and  his  colour  changed 
from  red  to  white,  and  white  to  red,  in  the  intensity 
of  his  emotions  and  his  indignation.  *  But  you  have 
no  right  to  make  the  living  bear  the  burden  of  the 
faults  of  the  dead.  If  you  honour  my  actions  in  the 
last  two  days,  you  must  at  least  respect  me.  You 
cannot  admire  a  man's  conduct,  and  despise  himself.' 

*  I  have  never  said  that  I  despised  you.     All  your 
public  conduct  would  impose  respect  on  any  one. 
Had  it  not  done  so,  he  would  never  have  received 
you  here.      But  between  you  and  me  there  can  never 
be  any  friendship,  any  intimacy.     If  the  past  were 
not   set  between   us,  the   present  would  render   it 
impossible.     I  am  poor,  alone,  and  of  no  account. 
I  cannot  receive  you  here  now  that  my  great-grand- 
father is  dead.' 

<  Why  ? ' 

c  Why  ?     Is  it  necessary  to  say  ? ' 

1 1  see  no  reason.  You  attach  no  importance  to 
royalty  or  to  rank,  therefore  why  set  them  as  a 
barrier  between  you  and  one  who,  equally  with 
yourself,  sets  no  store  on  them  ? ' 

*  I    attach   no   weight   to    them  ;    but  the  world 
attaches  much.     You  are  what  you  are ;   it  cannot 


388  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

be  altered.  And  I,  being  what  I  am,  cannot,  I 
repeat,  receive  you  here.' 

'  You  mean  that  you  will  not  ? ' 

1  Well,  put  it  so.     I  will  not/ 

{ You  are  cruel  —  and ' 

He  was  about  to  say  ungrateful,  but  his  generosity 
kept  the  reproach  unspoken.  She  answered  the 
unuttered  thought. 

f  Oh,  no,'  she  murmured,  and  the  melody  of  her 
voice  faltered.  '  I  am  not  cruel,  nor  am  I  thankless. 
If  the  nation  have  honoured  him  at  the  last  it  is  due 
to  you,  to  you  alone.  If  I  believed  still  in  the  God 
of  my  childish  prayers,  I  would  pray  for  you  day  and 
night.  But  you  are  what  you  are  :  you  are  a  son  of 
the  King ;  you  are  Elim  of  Gunderode ;  there  are 
only  two  lives  between  you  and  the  throne.  I  am 
poor  and  alone,  though  I  have  enough  for  my  house 
and  for  my  bread.  You  must  see,  sir,  that  there  can 
be  no  friendship  between  us.  If  you  persist  in 
coming  here  you  will  drive  me  away  from  the  only 
place  that  I  can  regard  as  home.' 

There  was  a  pathetic  supplication  in  her  voice 
from  which  the  coldness  and  the  pride  had  passed 
away,  and  in  her  eyes  there  was  a  mist  as  of  unshed 
tears.  He  saw  that  she  spoke  in  entire  sincerity,  and 
not  without  pain  to  herself;  he  was  touched,  but  he 
was  not  convinced ;  his  anger  was  disarmed,  but  his 
desire  was  only  increased.  He  felt  that  he  could  not, 
at  such  a  moment  of  bereavement,  say  all  that  it 
was  upon  his  lips  to  say,  but  he  did  not  for  a 
moment  accept  her  decision  and  her  dismissal.  It 
was  upon  his  lips  to  cry  to  her  :  '  I  love  you  !  I  love 
you  !  I  will  give  up  everything  for  your  sake  ! ' 
But  he  held  his  peace.  She  was  alone. 


xxiv  HELIANTHUS  389 

He  had  profaned  love  too  often  to  be  willing  to 
speak  of  it  in  the  same  breath  with  her  name.  He 
scarcely  dared  to  let  his  thoughts  dwell  on  it,  for  the 
family  of  the  Illyris  had  been  already  too  deeply 
wronged  by  his  own  House  for  him  to  dream  of 
further  wrong  ;  and  what  else,  save  wrong,  could  love 
if  offered  from  him  to  her  be  deemed  ? 

He  had  been  received  at  that  house  by  the  hero 
of  Argileion  and  Samaris  with  forgiveness  for  the 
offences  of  his  race,  and  had  come  thither  in  frank 
good  faith.  Every  law  of  honour  and  of  conscience 
forbade  him  to  abuse  the  reception  given  to  him  by 
one,  once  so  great,  and  in  old  age  so  utterly  helpless, 
as  had  been  Platon  Illyris. 

Receiving  no  reply  or  promise  from  him  she  said, 
almost  in  supplication  :  — 

{  Sir  —  sir  —  surely  you  must  see  for  yourself  that 
you  must  never  come  here  now  that  he  can  no 
longer  receive  you  ?  Your  visits  were  to  him.  They 
must  cease  now  he  is  no  more.' 

He  was  silent  and  mortified.  Here  was  the  only 
place  where  his  presence  was  not  welcome,  his  remem- 
brance coveted,  his  visit  received  with  gratitude, 
pride,  and  emotion. 

1  Why  are  you  so  harsh  to  me  ? '  he  said,  after 
waiting  in  vain  to  hear  some  softening  word. 

c  Harsh  ! '  she  said  with  some  impatience.  c  There 
is  no  question  of  harshness,  or  kindness,  that  I  am 
aware.  It  is  obvious  that  you  have  no  reason  to 
come  now  that  he  can  neither  hear  you  nor  speak  to 
you.' 

c  It  was  not  wholly  for  him,'  murmured  Elim,  and 
the  hesitation  and  timidity  of  a  boy  of  eighteen  came 
over  him,  and  he  paused  in  confusion. 


39o  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

'  Can  I  be  of  no  use  to  you  in  any  way  ? '  he 
added,  humbly,  fearing  he  had  offended  her. 

*  None,  sir,'  she  answered.  '  You  can  only  do  us 
harm.' 

'  That  is  a  cruel  answer.  Some  power  at  least  I 
have.' 

' You  have  too  much  power.  You  are  one  of  the 
elect  of  the  earth.  You  must  see  that  now  he  is  no 
more  you  must  not  cross  this  threshold.' 

'Why?  Whatever  power  I  possess  is  but  your 
humblest  servant.  Whatever  you  might  bid  me  do, 
I  would  do.' 

'  I  bid  you  go,  and  not  return.  Obey  me  since 
you  have  promised  to  obey.' 

( Why  ?  Why  should  we  be  strangers  to  each 
other?  Why  live  as  though  we  were  enemies?' 

'  Because  your  race  and  mine  can  have  no 
bond  of  friendship.  He  told  you  so,  again  and 
again.' 

'  Why  am  I  to  suffer  for  the  sins,  or  the  falseness, 
of  my  forefathers  ?  The  crime  against  Illyris  was  the 
crime  of  Theodoric  alone.' 

'  It  lies  on  you.  It  lies  on  every  member  of  your 
House.' 

'Had  the  nation  no  share  in  it?'  said  Othyris 
with  reproach.  '  If  the  people  had  been  true  to  their 
liberator,  my  family  would  have  been  powerless 
against  him.' 

'  That  may  be  true,'  she  said  slowly.  '  But  can  a 
dog  defend  his  master  if  the  dog  has  been  chained 
and  muzzled  ?  Helianthus  was  that  dog.  Who 
chained  him  ?  Who  muzzled  him  ? ' 

Othyris  was  silent.  To  reason  with  her  was 
useless ;  to  tempt,  to  persuade,  to  entreat  her  were 


xxiv  HELIANTHUS  391 

equally  in  vain  ;  unless  her  own  heart  turned  traitor 
to  her  creed  no  other  assailant  would  move  her. 

She  looked  at  him  with  her  clear,  calm,  meditative 
eyes,  and  there  was  no  emotion  in  them  ;  no  timidity 
—  none  of  the  fear  of  a  virginal  passion.  She  was 
always  the  goddess  of  those  classic  groves,  aloof  from 
all  mortal  weakness. 

c  Go  ! '  she  said  to  him,  not  harshly  but  with 
firmness.  *  Go,  sir.  You  have  many  duties,  many 
interests,  many  friends.  Forget  Aquilegia.  Remem- 
ber only  that  you  have  done  a  noble  action  in  defence 
of  a  great  memory.  Your  own  conscience  should  be 
enough  reward.  Farewell.' 

She  would  not  have  been  human  had  she  been 
wholly  insensible  to  the  power  she  possessed ;  but 
she  was  without  vanity,  she  was  unspoiled  by  contact 
with  other  women,  and  her  antagonism  to  the  reigning 
race  was  far  stronger  in  her  than  any  personal  feeling. 
She  hated  their  past :  she  hated  their  present. 

A  great  offence  rose  up  in  Othyris  for  a  moment ; 
caste,  usage,  privilege,  consciousness  of  pure  purpose, 
and  inherited  instincts  of  command,  all  flushed  his 
veins  with  anger,  and  made  him  for  one  instant  ready 
to  turn  his  back  on  her  for  ever :  to  leave  her  to  any 
fate,  to  tear  his  adoration  of  her  out  of  his  heart  and 
memory.  Was  it  possible  that  any  woman  could 
dare  speak  so  to  him,  a  Prince  of  Helianthus  ? 

She  did  not  even  look  at  him  or  wait  to  see  the 
effect  of  her  words.  She  went  up  the  narrow  wooden 
stairs  in  the  light  of  the  morning,  opened  the  door  of 
her  chamber,  and  went  within.  She  did  not  draw  the 
bolt,  for  she  knew  that  he  would  not  follow  her. 
He  held  her  in  too  high  esteem.  He  was  too  true 
a  gentleman. 


392  HELIANTHUS          CHAP,  xxiv 

He  was  very  pale  and  his  breath  came  fast  and 
painfully  ;  he  had  been  dismissed  and  wounded  ;  he 
felt  lower  than  the  lowest  of  the  naked  men  crawling 
through  the  surf  below  on  the  shore,  with  the  creels 
of  rotted  seaweed  on  their  bowed  backs. 

A  woman's  unkindness  penetrates,  hurts,  rankles, 
festers  in  the  heart  of  a  man,  as  no  outrage  from  one 
of  his  own  sex  can  do;  and  Ilia  was  the  one  living 
being  out  of  the  whole  multitudes  of  earth  who  had 
the  power  to  wound  Othyris  ! 

Ilia  that  evening  sat  at  the  barred  casement  of  her 
chamber  and  looked  at  the  moon,  nearly  at  its  full, 
rise  beyond  the  olive-trees.  The  solitude  and  the 
solemnity  of  death  were  still  in  the  silence  of  the 
house.  The  sense  of  a  vanished  presence,  of  some- 
thing for  ever  lost  and  gone,  were  in  the  quiet  place  ; 
the  scent  of  the  old  books  blent  with  the  odour  of  the 
wild-flowers;  if  men  spared  the  place,  the  books 
would  last  and  the  flowers  bloom  through  centuries  ; 
Illyris  alone  was  gone,  never  to  return. 

A  great  sense  of  loneliness  was  upon  her.  She  had 
leaned  on  his  wisdom  as  on  a  staff  which  would  never 
fail ;  and  now  the  staff  was  broken. 


CHAPTER   XXV 

WHEN  Othyris  reached  his  palace  that  evening  he 
found  himself  under  arrest,  and  confined  to  his 
rooms.  He  was  not  surprised.  Arrest  had  been  a 
frequent  punishment,  received  by  him  for  lesser 
offences  than  his  had  been  that  day.  The  guard 
had  been  doubled  round  his  palace,  and  the  troops 
were  still  confined  to  barracks. 

The  governor  of  the  city  and  other  great  func- 
tionaries, civil  and  military,  were  perpetually  ex- 
changing consultations  with  each  other  and  passing 
to  and  from  the  Soleia. 

One  Ministry  had  fallen  ;  another  had  not  yet 
been  formed ;  it  was  such  an  interregnum  as  the 
King  would  willingly  have  had  continued  indefinitely, 
since  it  left  him  sole  lord  and  arbiter  of  current 
events,  within  the  limits  of  that  Constitution  which 
galled  and  fretted  him  so  sorely  in  the  free  exercise 
of  his  will. 

That  under  his  rule,  during  his  reign,  a  popular 
victory  such  as  the  day  had  seen  should  have  been 
possible  was  the  most  acute  mortification  to  him. 
The  cypher  telegrams  of  Julius's  on  the  event,  in 
their  sarcastic  condolence  and  their  ironical  sympathy, 
were  like  gad-flies  in  a  raw  wound.  Julius  was  no 
doubt  wondering  why  Helios  was  not  placed  in  a 

393 


394  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

state  of  siege.  John  of  Gunderode  knew  that  he 
must  seem  a  poor  creature  to  his  dominant  nephew. 

When  the  population  of  Helios  became  aware 
of  Elim's  arrest  it  was  indignant,  and  willing,  had  it 
known  how,  to  rescue  and  revenge  him.  The  city 
was  in  ferment.  Angry  groups  discussed  and  con- 
demned the  arrest  until  far  into  the  night.  Work 
was  neglected ;  in  the  docks  and  many  other  places 
it  was  entirely  suspended.  Strong  measures  were 
taken  by  the  authorities  to  prevent  any  violence  or 
harangues,  or  meetings  of  any  sort.  Most  of  the 
shops  and  places  of  refreshment  or  of  amusement 
were  closed.  The  palaces  of  the  aristocracy  and 
plutocracy  were  shuttered  and  their  iron  gates  were 
bolted  and  locked.  The  guard  around  and  within 
the  Soleia  was  doubled,  and  the  troops  were,  as  on 
the  previous  day,  confined  to  barracks  ready  for  any 
emergency.  The  aspect  of  Helios  was  that  of  a  city 
in  a  state  of  siege  or  on  the  eve  of  revolution. 

But  John  of  Gunderode  was  not  alarmed ;  he 
knew  the  Helianthines.  They  were  like  women, 
loud  and  excessive  in  their  emotions,  but  in  action 
weak  and  hesitating.  Their  stomachs  knew  not  the 
beef  and  beer  of  the  Guthones.  It  was  a  wave  of  re- 
membrance, of  reverence,  of  repentance,  which  swept 
through  the  land  from  the  Mare  Magnum  to  the  Alps 
of  Rhaetia.  It  might  die  down  like  a  fire  of  straw ; 
it  might  live  on  till  it  burnt  all  that  was  opposed  to  it. 
No  one  could  say ;  but  it  was  alight,  and  the  King's 
son  had  held  the  torch  to  the  tow.  The  King 
consulted  no  one.  He  was  the  father  of  the  offender, 
the  sovereign  of  the  country,  the  head  of  the  army. 
Othyris  was  in  a  triple  sense  guilty  towards  him.  He 
caused  a  court-martial  to  be  held  pro  forma,  but  its 


xxv  HELIANTHUS  395 

sentence  was  a  foregone  conclusion  —  a  foreseen  and 
dictated  condemnation.  The  crime  of  the  King's 
second  son  was,  in  the  judgment  of  the  King  himself, 
of  the  military  caste,  of  the  conservative  party,  of  the 
Court  at  home  and  all  other  Courts  abroad,  utterly 
unmentionable  and  unpardonable. 

It  was  a  sin  against  the  sacred  manes  of  all  the 
kings  who  had  ever  lived  and  ruled ;  every  imperial 
and  monarchical  sentiment  in  the  world  had  been 
outraged  by  his  public  escort  through  the  city  of  the 
funeral  of  Illyris.  Even  Kantakuzene  dared  not 
defend  such  an  action. 

When  asked  why  he  had  not  endeavoured  to 
obtain  the  royal  assent  to  his  escort  of  the  funeral, 
Othyris  answered  that  there  had  been  no  time  to 
seek  it;  also  that  he  did  not  think  his  accompaniment 
of  the  bier  was  one  which  required  any  permis- 
sion from  the  Crown.  It  had  been  an  inoffensive 
testimony  of  a  perfectly  natural  union  of  sentiment 
on  his  part  with  the  people  of  Helios. 

*  You  must  be  aware,  sir,'  said  the  President, 
c  that  such  an  act  on  your  part  was  on  the  contrary 
most  offensive  to  the  Crown.' 

'  I  do  not  see  the  offence,'  said  Othyris.  f  Neither 
on  my  own  part,  nor  on  that  of  the  populace,  was 
there  any  disrespect  shown  to  my  father  or  to  the 
State.' 

f  What,  sir  !  Not  the  burial  of  a  revolutionist  in 
the  same  temple  with  Theodoric  the  Great ! ' 

t  They  fought  side  by  side  once.  Of  the  two  it  is 
not  Platon  Illyris  who  has  the  lesser  title  to  a  place 
in  that  classic  sepulchre.' 

A  murmur  of  horror  from  the  officers  assembled 
in  council  followed  this  speech.  The  words  would 


396  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

have  been  shocking  from  any  one,  but  from  a  prince 
of  the  blood  ! 

1  Let  me  caution  you,  sir,  such  speeches  as  yours 
cannot  assist  your  defence,  they  must  increase  your 
punishment.' 

(  That  will  be  as  it  may.' 

£  You  are  wofully  mistaken,  sir,  as  a  prince,  as  a 
son,  as  an  officer.' 

f  It  is  inevitable  that  a  military  tribunal  should 
think  so.' 

Those  who  sat  in  judgment  were  perplexed.  Any 
other  person  making  use  of  such  speech  as  his  could 
have  been  shot.  With  Othyris  they  could  not  take 
so  severely  swift  and  simple  a  solution. 

If  they  could  only  have  bent  him  to  any  measure 
of  retractation,  of  admission  of  offence,  of  regret,  of 
apology,  their  course  of  action  would  have  been 
clearer  to  them. 

The  examination  lasted  long  and  was  full  of 
wearisome  repetition.  Othyris  did  not  alter  or  in- 
crease his  replies  either  in  matter  or  in  manner. 
He  had  done  that  which  he  had  done  out  of  respect 
for  the  dead  man,  and  out  of  consciousness  that  his 
own  House  had  never  shown  either  respect  or  grati- 
tude to  the  great  patriarch  by  whom  Helianthus  had 
been  freed  from  the  foreigner. 

*  Platon  Illyris,'  he  replied,  f  was  the  liberator  of 
Helianthus.' 

'  Sir,  you  forget  your  great  and  revered  ancestor.' 

4 1  forget  nothing.' 

{  Do  you  consider,  sir,  that  a  prince  of  your  House 
should  have  publicly  proclaimed  his  sympathy  with 
a  republican  ? ' 

*  I   consider  that  my  family,   beyond    all    others, 


xxv  HELIANTHUS  397 

owes  gratitude  and  honour  to  the  victor  of  Argileion 
and  of  Samaris.' 

f  He  was  a  rebel  against  your  illustrious  ancestor.' 
f  He  had  full  right  to  be  so,  if  he  were.' 
*  That  is  strange  language  on  your  part,  sir,  being 
who  you  are.' 

(  Being  who  I  am,  I  am  bound  to  speak  the  truth.' 
To  most  of  those  present  it  seemed  that  a  mili- 
tary execution  in  the  courtyard  of  the  fortress  would 
have  been  the  most  wise  and  the  most  just  end  to  an 
unpardonable  scandal.  But  what  would  the  people 
of  Helianthus,  the  citizens  of  Helios,  think  of  such 
a  sentence  passed  by  a  father  on  a  son,  by  the  head 
of  a  nation  on  the  favourite  of  that  nation  ? 

They  felt  that  if  a  hair  of  the  head  of  this  rebel 
were  touched,  the  city  certainly,  and  probably  after 
it  the  country,  would  rise  in  arms.  True,  Elim 
being  dead  would  be  powerless  to  profit  by  their 
rising ;  but  before  now  dead  men  have  had  more 
sway  than  their  living  foes. 

Three  days  went  by  without  any  news  reaching 
those  of  Aquilegia  from  the  city.  Janos  was  for- 
bidden by  his  lady  to  go  down  to  the  gates,  for  she 
was  afraid  that  his  ignorance  and  his  excitement  might 
get  him  into  trouble  there,  in  his  pride  at  the  triumph 
of  his  late  master.  No  one  came  ;  the  few  necessities 
of  life  were  at  hand  on  the  soil  and  in  the  cupboard ; 
there  was  less  need  than  ever  for  any  expenditure  to 
meet  their  simple  wants.  Therefore  nothing  was 
known  by  any  one  there  of  the  arrest  of  Othyris  until 
the  fourth  day,  when,  as  it  was  market-day,  Janos 
could  not  be  kept  on  the  land,  as  he  had  produce  to 
sell  and  calves  to  fetch  home.  He  returned  late, 


398  HELIANTHUS  CHAP, 

greatly  distressed  and  agitated,  consigning  the  calves 
to  Philemon. 

{  The  great  lord  is  being  sent  away,'  said  Janos, 
when  he  came  up  to  the  house. 

f  What  do  you  mean  ? '  asked  Ma'ia,  who  was 
spinning  by  the  well. 

c  Our  prince  who  saved  Philemon,'  replied  Janos. 
*  They  sent  him  away,  to  keep  him  away  for  years 
and  years,  that  the  people  may  not  see  him.  They 
were  all  talking  of  it  in  the  streets.  The  King,  his 
father,  wills  it  so.  The  King  is  jealous  of  him.  The 
people  are  very  angry.' 

'Are  you  sure  of  what  you  say  ? ' 

*  Sure  ?     Ay,   I    am    sure.     A   score   of  mouths 
yelled  it  at  me.     The  city  is  angry.' 

*  But  why  does  the  King  do  this  ?     What  is  his 
offence  ? ' 

*  They  say  it  is  because  he  put  our  Master  in  the 
House  of  the  Immortals.     That  made  the  King  hot 
against  him.' 

*  That  is  like  enough,'  said  Mai'a  gravely,  and  she 
resumed  her  spinning. 

Ilia  came  towards  them,  from  the  stone  bench  by 
the  porch  where  she  had  been  seated  ;  she  had  heard 
the  words  they  spoke. 

'  Is  he  to  go  into  exile  ?'  she  asked.  Her  face  was 
very  pale. 

.'  What  is  exile  ?  '  said  Janos.  '  To  go  out  of  the 
country  ? ' 

'Yes.' 

'That  I  do  not  know.     I  think  not/ 

£  Why  did  you  not  ask  more  ? ' 

'  The  streets  were  like  hives  of  swarming  bees  ; 
they  dumfounded  me.  Besides,  I  had  to  go  to  the 


xxv  HELIANTHUS  399 

end  of  the  world  to  fetch  the  bull  calves.  But  this 
I  heard  from  a  dozen  mouths  in  the  morning,  and 
then  again  as  I  brought  the  calves  through  the  city  : 
he  is  to  be  shut  up  far  away.' 

c  For  what  he  did  the  other  day  ? ' 

*  Ay,  for  that.     So  they  say.' 
Ilia  was  silent. 

*  Some    said    the  people  should  rise,'  added    the 
peasant ;  *  but  others  said  no,  they  were  not  ready, 
and  the  King  is  strong.' 

*  The  King  is  very  strong,'  muttered  Maia. 

Ilia  said  nothing;  she  went  away  under  the  shade 
of  the  olive  branches.  The  sun  was  setting,  a  dusky 
gold  shining  through  the  grey  shadows  of  the  great 
trees.  She  walked  on  alone  through  their  solitudes  ; 
what  she  had  heard  smote  her  conscience  with  a 
sense  of  unworthiness  and  coldness  ;  he  suffered  for 
her  and  hers,  and  he  had  received  scarcely  a  dry 
crust  of  gratitude. 

'  And  I  scarcely  thanked  him.  I  closed  the  house 
to  him,'  thought  she  ;  and  the  tears  stood  in  her 
eyes  and  blinded  her  to  the  sunlight,  and  to  the 
blaze  of  the  distant  dome  of  gold  under  which 
Platon  Illyris  and  Theodoric  lay  side  by  side, 
their  enmities  forgot,  their  valour  alone  remembered 
in  Helios. 

At  sunrise  she  sent  Ma'ia  down  into  the  city  to 
hear  if  the  tidings  brought  by  Janos  were  confirmed. 
The  woman  returned  before  noon  and  said  that  they 
were  true.  All  the  people  of  Helios  were  agitated 
by  them  ;  some  wished  for  a  demonstration  before 
the  Soleia,  but  the  hours  slipped  away  and  nothing 
was  done  ;  only  the  number  of  the  city  guards  and 
carabineers  was  doubled.  It  was  not  known  whether 


400  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

the  Duke  of  Othyris  had  already  gone,  but  it  was 
generally  believed  that  he  had  taken  his  departure 
by  a  night  train ;  rumours  as  to  the  length  of  his 
term  of  banishment  were  various,  and  always  greatly 
exaggerated.  The  populace  were  incensed,  but  help- 
less for  want  of  a  controlling  hand. 

As  Ma'ia  spoke,  the  noon  sun  struck  the  golden 
dome  of  the  Pantheon  where  it  stood  amidst  its 
cypress  groves  on  the  other  side  of  the  bay.  Through 
a  break  in  the  woods  it  was  visible  across  the  water, 
the  dome  shining  in  the  meridian  light.  Othyris 
had  opened  the  gates  of  the  Temple  to  Platon 
Illyris,  and  had  been  chastised  for  the  act  as  for  a 
crime. 

That  morning  a  letter  was  given  by  the  common 
postman  to  the  boy  Philemon,  as  he  worked  in  the 
lower  woods. 

*  Take    that   to    your   mistress,'  said    the   letter- 
carrier.     He  took  it  to  her. 

It  was  a  note  of  only  a  few  lines  in  the  hand- 
writing of  Othyris.  It  said  briefly  that  he  had  been 
condemned  to  twelve  months'  detention  in  a  fortress, 
and  added  :  — 

*  /  beg  you  not  to  be  distressed.     I  am  proud  to  have 
merited  such  punishment  in  so  just  a  cause.     Accept  the 
homage  of  your  humble  servant.' 

It  was  signed  merely  c  Elim.' 

The  note  dropped  from  Ilia's  hand  on  the  cushion 
of  the  lace  at  which  she  worked.  The  shock  was 
great  to  her.  She  was  conscious  that  she  had  not 
deserved  from  him  so  much  devotion  or  such  total 
forbearance  from  reproach.  A  year  of  his  life  was 


xxv  HELIANTHUS  401 

lost  through  her  !  She  could  never  give  that  year 
back  to  him.  Its  slow,  long,  cruel  hours  would  drag 
their  dull  length  away,  and  be  for  ever  dead  and 
buried  like  a  sunless  day. 

4 1  am  sorry  —  oh,  I  am  sorry  ! '  she  murmured  ; 
the  tears  swam  in  her  eyes,  an  intense  sense  of  her 
debt  to  him  and  of  his  sacrifice  to  her  filled  her  with 
regret  which  was  well-nigh  remorse.  She  could 
never  give  him  back  this  year  of  his  youth  which  he 
was  about  to  spend  in  captivity  for  her  and  hers. 
She  felt  humbled  and  ashamed. 

That  night  she  could  not  sleep.  In  the  morning 
she  sent  Janos  to  the  market  in  the  city. 

*  Bring  me  news  of  what  has  happened,'  she  said 
to  him.     He  brought  her  news,  with  sobs  of  rage  in 
his  chest,  and  brown  hairy  hands  clenched. 

*  He  is  gone,'  he  said.       'They  have  sent  him 
away  into  prison.     It  was  done  at  night  all  secretly. 
He  is   there  in  the  fortress  of  Constantine.     The 
people  are  curs,  sheep,  cravens.     They  let  this  thing 
be  done ! ' 

In  the  fortress  of  Constantine  !  Where  Theodoric 
had  confined  Illyris  !  Truly  he  had  paid  with  his 
person  for  the  offences  of  his  forbears,  for  the  false- 
hood of  his  race. 

'  What  shall  we  do,  O  daughter  of  Illyris  ? '  cried 
Janos.  c  Command,  I  will  give  my  life.' 

f  We  can  do  nothing,  my  friend,'  she  answered. 
f  We  are  weak  as  water,  you  and  I.' 

c  But  the  people  ?  They  would  be  with  us,  and 
for  him.' 

c  Platon  Illyris  lay  five  years  in  the  casemates  of 
that  prison,  and  the  people  let  him  lie.  What  can 
they  do  against  the  metal  mouths  of  cannon  ?  Pray, 

2D 


402  HELIANTHUS  CHAP,  xxv 

Janos  ;  you  believe  in  prayer.  That  is  all  that  you 
can  do.' 

Janos  swore  a  great  oath  on  the  names  of  saints 
and  pagan  gods,  who  were  all  one  to  him. 

f  My  arm  is  strong.  It  should  be  broken  from 
shoulder  to  wrist  for  him.  He  gave  me  back 
Philemon.' 

f  If  ever  the  time  come,  yes,  do  not  spare  your- 
self. But  now  you  can  do  nothing.  The  King  is 
strong  and  cruel.' 

*  Those  lads  missed  the  King.  I  should  not  miss 
him.  My  knife  is  sure.  In  a  sure  hand  a  knife  is 
better  than  a  bullet.' 

1  Hush !  The  Master,  were  he  here,  would  bid 
you  do  no  evil  that  good  may  come,  nor  would  Prince 
Elim  wish  for  vengeance.' 

Janos,  his  bronzed  face  wet  with  sweat  and  black 
with  passion,  slunk  away  like  a  dog  forbidden  to 
avenge  a  friend.  Ilia  went  within. 

The  dove  which  had  been  often  fondled  by 
Platon  Illyris  flew  to  her  and  stroked  her  cheek  with 
its  caressing  beak. 

f  O  bird  of  peace,  you  are  no  bird  of  ours  !  '  she 
cried,  in  passion.  f  The  Illyris  were  men  of  war. 
Alas  that  I,  a  woman,  and  alone,  cannot  lift  their 
sword,  cannot  lead  their  people ! ' 


CHAPTER   XXVI 

DETENTION  for  life  in  a  fortress  would  not  have 
seemed  too  much  severity  in  the  esteem  of  the  King. 
But  with  the  shrewd  caution  which  was  his  most 
useful  quality,  he  knew  that  the  nation  would  not 
consent  to  any  such  sentence.  The  majority  of  the 
people  admired  the  conduct  of  his  second  son ;  and 
too  great  severity  to  the  popular  favourite  would 
provoke  dangerous  resentment,  perhaps  even  danger- 
ous action.  He  would  have  liked  nothing  better 
than  to  consign  Elim  for  life  to  one  of  the  great, 
grim,  fortified  buildings  standing  in  desolate  places  of 
the  hills  or  of  the  seashores,  which  served  as  military 
prisons,  as  barracks,  or  as  powder-magazines,  and 
where  many  a  young  officer,  condemned  by  court- 
martial,  had  fretted  his  soul  away  in  the  dreary  case- 
mates, amongst  those  rugged  solitudes  where  no 
sound  ever  came  except  the  tramp  of  sentinels,  the 
grounding  of  arms,  the  lumbering  of  caissons,  the 
cries  of  the  sea-birds  on  the  waters  and  the  plovers 
on  the  moors.  To  one  of  these  strongholds  the 
King  would  willingly  have  consigned  Othyris,  and 
have  left  him  there,  to  eat  his  heart  out  like  the 
caged  eagle  he  had  pitied  in  his  childhood.  But  he 
did  not  dare. 

Obstinate,  insolent,  disdainful  of  the  people  as  he 

403 


4o4  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

was,  John  of  Gunderode  knew  that  such  a  course 
might  lead  to  a  revolt  of  the  masses  and  to  that 
exile  of  himself  which  Kantakuzene  had  pictured  to 
himself  with  so  much  amusement.  If  he  had  been 
sure  of  his  army  he  would  not  have  hesitated;  but 
he  was  not  sure. 

His  secret  reports  left  him  no  doubt  as  to  the 
increase  of  socialism  and  republicanism  amongst  his 
troops  :  the  murrain  in  the  patient  flocks,  of  which 
his  eldest  son  had  spoken.  So  with  his  usual  power 
of  restraint  upon  his  own  desires,  he  limited  himself 
to  the  mild  punishment  of  the  banishment  of  Othyris 
to  one  of  his  own  estates,  Hydaspe,  for  twelve 
months'  time,  in  an  honourable  captivity  with  which 
public  opinion  could  not  presume  to  quarrel. 
Hydaspe  was  far  away  from  the  capital,  on  the 
south-east  coast,  in  a  sparsely-peopled  province ; 
Othyris  would  be  removed  from  the  sight  of  the 
populace  of  Helios,  and  the  King  considered  that 
what  a  mob  does  not  see  it  forgets. 

Kantakuzene  greatly  regretted  the  sentence  ;  but 
it  was  impossible  for  him  to  oppose  a  decision  of  the 
head  of  the  State  and  the  head  of  the  army.  He 
too  knew  the  temper  of  the  Helianthines.  Removed 
from  their  sight,  it  was  probable  that  Othyris  would 
retain  little  place  in  their  memories.  They  would 
not  march  across  half  the  width  of  the  country  to  his 
place  of  captivity  in  their  tens  of  thousands  and  bring 
back  in  triumph  to  the  capital  the  man  they  loved. 
They  had  not  the  grit  in  them  to  do  that.  His 
presence  could  move  them  to  anything ;  in  absence 
he  would  be  rarely  remembered,  or  so  their  rulers 
thought.  Personally  Kantakuzene  was  much  attached 
to  him ;  he  felt  the  charm  of  an  unselfish  character 


xxvi  HELIANTHUS  405 

and  of  generous  and  exalted  ideals ;  but  being  now 
First  Minister  of  the  Crown,  he  could  not  but  feel 
relieved  from  the  extreme  embarrassment  which  the 
presence  of  Othyris  caused  to  him  in  Helios  —  an 
embarrassment  which  might  increase  perilously  at 
any  moment  of  public  excitement. 

Kantakuzene  was  sincerely  distressed,  but  he  was 
in  the  midst  of  all  the  agitation,  anxiety,  and  diffi- 
culty of  forming  his  Cabinet,  of  apportioning  the 
loaves  and  fishes  between  the  numerous  claimants, 
of  endeavouring  to  disarm  enmity,  to  confirm  hesita- 
tion, to  pass  over  friendship  which  might  be  safely 
slighted,  to  irritate  none,  to  alienate  none,  and, 
above  all,  to  remain  sole  master  of  the  situation. 
At  such  a  vital  moment  Kantakuzene  had  little 
thought  to  give  even  to  one  who  so  much  interested 
him  as  the  second  son  of  the  King.  If  he  could 
have  interfered  successfully,  he  would  have  done  so 
even  to  his  own  hindrance ;  but  it  was  impossible 
for  him  to  touch  a  question  so  delicate  and  personal, 
to  interfere  in  a  matter  which  was  exclusively  at 
once  a  military  and  a  family  question  for  the  judg- 
ment and  the  action  of  the  sovereign  alone.  Kanta- 
kuzene consoled  himself  with  the  reflection  that 
Othyris  would  doubtless  be  pardoned  as  soon  as 
some  months  of  his  punishment  had  been  endured, 
and  in  the  agreeable  sense  of  dominance  and  of 
success  which  came  to  him  as  he  presided  at  his 
first  Cabinet  Council,  he  had  not  much  time  or 
inclination  to  give  to  the  prisoner  of  Hydaspe. 
*  He  is  quixotic  !  He  is  quixotic! '  said  Kantakuzene 
to  others,  with  a  sigh.  c  It  is  a  fine  defect,  but  it 
is  a  defect !  ' 

Men  have  to  take  the  world  as  it  is,  and  live  in 


4o6  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

it  as  best  they  may.  It  is  not  quite  the  bear-garden 
that  satirists  say,  but  neither  is  it  quite  the  rose- 
garden  which  poets  picture.  Kantakuzene,  who  in 
his  early  time  had  gathered  his  roses,  now  preferred 
to  tame  the  bears.  Perchance  Othyris  would  do  so 
also  in  the  future. 

It  was  characteristic  of  the  King  that  he  did  not 
select  ^Enothrea,  which  was  beloved  by  Elim  and 
beautiful  in  every  way,  as  the  estate  on  which  his 
son  was  to  pass  a  year  of  solitude.  He  chose 
Hydaspe,  which  was  hot  as  a  furnace  in  summer  and 
cold  as  the  North  Pole  in  winter  —  a  great  mediae- 
val pile  which  had  stood  many  sieges,  standing  on 
bare  rocks  which  rose  out  of  marshes  and  rice-fields, 
and  which  looked  on  a  river  which  was  a  boiling 
torrent  in  winter  and  a  bed  of  stones  in  the  dry 
season.  There  was,  indeed,  the  sea  near  at  hand ; 
but  it  was  separated  by  three  miles  of  sand  and 
quicksands  from  the  fortress,  and  was  a  portion  of 
the  eastern  waters  on  which  a  sail  was  rarely  seen — 
a  melancholy  and  landlocked  bay,  on  which  a  red 
and  rayless  sun  rose  drearily  in  the  canicular  heats. 
It  was  not  a  portion  of  the  inheritance  from  Basil, 
but  had  been  bequeathed  to  Othyris  by  a  cousin- 
german.  It  was  a  possession  of  little  value,  although 
of  great  extent  and  antiquity ;  its  revenues  were 
always  returned  by  him  to  the  poor  dwellers  on  the 
soil,  chiefly  workers  in  the  rice-fields  or  in  the 
dreary  plains  of  maize,  —  people  whose  lot  he  could 
make  less  hard  but  could  never  render  otherwise 
than  melancholy ;  burnt  up  by  the  heat  in  one 
season,  chilled  by  the  blasts  and  frosts  at  another, 
getting  up  at  every  dawn  to  toil  in  the  same  furrows 


xxvi  HELIANTHUS  407 

and  ditches,  giving  their  sons  to  the  cannon  and  the 
barracks,  seeing  their  daughters  naked  to  the  thighs 
in  the  rice  channels,  living  pell-mell  in  their  conical 
huts,  their  wives  dropping  the  fruit  of  their  womb 
as  ewes  drop  lambs  by  the  roadside,  seeing  always 
the  sun  go  down  upon  their  hopeless  labour  which 
could  never  change. 

If  Othyris  had  given  his  parole  not  to  leave 
Hydaspe,  he  would  not  have  been  subjected  to  any 
form  of  surveillance.  But  he  would  not  give  it. 
Therefore  his  movements  were  watched  continually, 
and  there  were  sentries  at  all  the  doors  and  gates  of 
the  castle.  The  place  was  his  indeed,  but  the  will 
of  another,  not  of  himself,  ruled  there.  He  was 
not  allowed  either  to  have  any  boat,  large  or  small, 
in  the  bay  for  any  movement  on  the  sea.  It  was 
imprisonment  in  all  but  name,  and  when  he  heard 
the  tramp  of  the  sentinels  on  the  ramparts  or  the 
grounding  of  arms  by  the  soldiers  on  the 
gateways,  he  realised  that  his  freedom  was  as  com- 
pletely lost  for  the  time  as  any  condemned  convict's. 
True,  he  was  still  owner  of  Hydaspe  and  still  a 
prince  of  Helianthus,  and  the  guards  set  over  him 
all  saluted  as  he  passed  and  stood  at  attention  so 
long  as  he  was  in  sight ;  but  he  was  virtually  and  to 
all  intents  and  purposes  a  captive,  though  an  un- 
diminished  deference  and  an  elaborate  ceremonial 
of  etiquette  still  preserved  to  him  the  dignity  of 
a  rank  which  he  hated,  and  which  now,  more 
than  ever  before,  seemed  to  him  an  irony  and  a 
burden. 

So  he  devoured  his  soul  in  silence,  and  the  heavy 
intense  heat  grew  more  painful,  and  evening  after 
evening  the  red,  rayless  ball  of  the  sun  sank  down 


4o8  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

behind  the  rocky  ridges  of  the  interior,  and  another 
joyless  and  useless  day  was  dead. 

Ilia  was  three  hundred  miles  away,  in  the  green, 
shadowy  Helichrysum  hills,  where  the  streams  ran 
fresh  and  cool  throughout  the  longest  day. 

At  any  other  time  Othyris  might  not  have  disliked 
this  dreary  solitude,  since  it  would  have  given  him 
time  for  study,  for  art,  for  philosophy  ;  and  he  would 
have  taken  pleasure  in  putting  on  canvas  the  desolate, 
severe  landscapes  of  this  joyless  province.  But  at 
the  present  moment  the  distance  separating  him  from 
Aquilegia,  his  ignorance  of  what  shape  Ilia's  future 
might  take,  his  fear  that  she  might  be  molested  or 
watched,  the  longing  of  a  man  in  love  to  be  near 
the  object  of  his  love,  made  his  imprisonment,  three 
hundred  miles  from  Helios,  almost  as  unbearable  as 
if  he  had  been  sent  to  a  convicts'  island  in  the 
distant  sea  which  rolled  away  from  those  eastern 
shores  of  Helianthus  to  the  still  mysterious  Orient. 
At  times  his  obedience  to  his  father's  commands 
seemed  to  him  cowardly  and  unworthy ;  at  others  he 
felt  that  he  could  not  in  duty,  in  honour,  give  the 
nation  an  example  of  insubordination  to  a  man  who 
was  the  head  of  the  State  as  well  as  his  father. 
Kantakuzene  had  said  rightly  that  the  second  son  of 
the  King  was  not  a  revolutionist  any  more  than  he 
was  a  reactionist.  People  who  believe  in  any 
extreme  are  satisfied  with  their  faith  and  with  them- 
selves ;  but  Othyris  had  not  such  consolation.  He 
would  have  thought  that  he  had  erred  if  he  had 
rebelled ;  he  feared  that  he  was  a  coward  because 
.he  obeyed. 

At  times,  indeed,  he  was  tempted  to  escape. 
There  was  a  close  cordon  of  sentinels  drawn  round 


xxvi  HELIANTHUS  409 

the  great  rocky  pile  of  Hydaspe,  but  he  believed 
that  his  gentlemen  would  assist  him  and  his  guards 
shut  their  eyes  to  his  secret  departure.  But  even  in 
this,  his  own  scruples  stood  like  incorruptible  gaolers 
in  his  path.  His  flight  would  entail  degradation 
and  punishment  on  those  who  rendered  it  possible ; 
even  if  he  himself  succeeded  in  gaining  his  liberty, 
those  who  remained  behind  him  would  pay  the  price 
of  it  to  one  who  never  pardoned.  Moreover,  if  he 
were  to  remain  in  the  country,  he  would  be  speedily 
retaken ;  and  if  he  were  to  leave  the  country  what 
use  would  freedom  be  ?  He  would  be  still  farther 
from  Aquilegia. 

There  is  no  punishment  so  stupid  or  so  stupefying 
as  captivity.  The  strongest  intellects  feel  its  bitter 
narcotic  dull  their  brain  and  corrode  their  energies. 
A  man  stays  happily  on  a  half  acre  of  ground  when 
he  stays  on  it  by  his  own  choice ;  but  a  principality 
is  insupportable  when  the  will  of  another  iforbids  him 
to  pass  its  confines. 

Othyris  wrote  to  Ilia  Illyris. 

It  was  an  imprudence,  but  no  man  in  love  was 
ever  prudent  yet  if  his  heart  were  tender  and  his 
years  were  few.  Moreover,  he  felt  in  her  that  pro- 
found trust  which  was  inspired  by  the  limpid  serenity 
of  her  regard,  the  character  of  her  thoughts,  and 
the  traditions  of  her  lineage.  An  Illyris  might  be 
betrayed,  but  never  could  betray. 

His  letter  was  not  answered,  but  it  was  not 
returned.  That  was  the  utmost  he  had  hoped  for 
when  he  wrote.  After  an  interval  he  wrote  again  ; 
he  had  never  written  in  confidence  before  to  any 
human  being ;  it  was  a  new  and  delightful  outlet 
of  his  inmost  thoughts.  It  was  unwise,  it  was 


4io  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

imprudent,  it  was  dangerous ;  but  it  was  for  those 
reasons  an  irresistible  temptation  to  lay  bare  his 
inmost  self  to  the  one  mind  which  was  capable  of 
sympathy  with  him.  That  he  received  no  reply  did 
not  surprise  or  chill  his  ardour ;  she  could  not  have 
written  to  him  without  being  something  less  than 
what  he  thought  her,  something  lower  than  an 
Illyris  should  have  been.  He  sent  his  letters  by  the 
common,  post,  for  if  he  had  sent  them  by  messengers 
he  imagined  that  they  would  have  been  returned ; 
she  would  have  taken  alarm  at  such  a  correspondence. 
He  hoped  that  coming,  like  house  swallows,  noise- 
lessly and  familiarly,  they  would  not  cause  her  any 
apprehension.  What  is  written  enters  the  brain  by 
the  eyes,  and  perhaps  penetrates  more  deeply  than 
what  is  spoken  and  enters  by  the  ears. 

The  first  of  the  letters  which  Ilia  received  from 
Othyris  came  from  the  town  in  the  wallet  of  Janos 
with  the  bread  and  meat  and  other  frugal  fare.  It  had 
been  given  to  him  by  a  postman  whom  he  had  met  on 
the  shore.  Ilia  had  no  correspondence,  as  she  had  no 
friends  except  the  nuns  in  the  north,  who  never  wrote, 
and  the  lace  merchant,  who  wrote  only  on  the  receipt 
of  work.  The  first  letter  from  Othyris  caused  her 
extreme  surprise  and  emotion.  It  was  impossible  to 
read  its  pages  without  belief  in  its  sincerity.  There 
was  no  possible  cause  to  doubt  the  veracity  of  its 
expressions;  and  in  its  humility  there  was  a  contrast 
to  the  position  of  the  writer  which  could  not  fail  to 
touch  the  reader.  Whether  she  would  or  no,  Ilia 
could  not  resist  the  conviction  that  he  meant  most 
absolutely  all  he  said.  The  letters  did  not  alarm  her, 
because  though  eloquent  they  were  restrained,  though 
ardent  they  were  timid,  though  impassioned  they  were 


xxvi  HELIANTHUS  411 

reverent.  They  were  the  letters  of  a  poet,  not  of  a 
libertine.  All  that  was  best  in  him,  all  that  was 
simplest,  truest,  most  sensitive,  most  unhappy,  was 
expressed  in  them  ;  the  dross  of  the  world  and  its 
vanities  and  its  passions  was  burned  out  of  his 
soul  as  it  spoke  to  hers ;  he  was  a  man  who  loved 
her  and  was  no  more,  no  less.  She  felt  that  his 
devotion  to  her  was  great,  but  she  was  too  ignorant 
of  the  world  to  be  able  to  measure  the  greatness 
of  it. 

His  adoration  might  be  a  passing  caprice ;  a 
passion  inflamed  by  difficulty ;  the  wilful  insistence 
of  a  spoilt  child  of  fate  ;  but  it  was  absolutely  true. 

Ilia  read  the  first  of  his  letters  once,  twice,  thrice, 
in  the  solitude  of  the  lonely  house  ;  then  she  wound 
it  about  a  stone  and  dropped  it  from  her  window 
into  the  open  well  which  was  immediately  beneath,  its 
marble  copings  overgrown  by  stone  crop  and  violet 
roots,  its  depths  never  troubled  save  by  the  old  bronze 
pail  let  down  by  a  cord  at  dawn  and  twilight.  The 
stone  smote  the  water,  and  she  knew  that  the  letter 
would  in  a  brief  time  be  soaked,  obliterated, 
destroyed  ;  but  words  which  could  not  die  lived  on 
in  letters  of  fire  in  her  remembrance.  Each  letter 
which  he  wrote  her  sank  to  the  same  watery  grave. 
The  peasants  believed  that  the  well  went  down,  down, 
down  to  the  very  centre  of  the  earth ;  it  seemed  to 
her  that  there  could  be  no  better  keeper  of  his  secret 
than  that  dark,  still,  mysterious  silence  of  an  un- 
fathomed  source. 

No  vanity  tempted  her  to  keep  his  correspondence. 
The  nature  which  is  born  free  from  vanity  cannot  be 
touched  by  it. 

Ilia  had  in  her  a  great  pride,  the  pride  of  race  ;  but 


412  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

such  pride  excludes  vanity,  as  the  true  heir  excludes 
the  bastard.  Letter  after  letter  as  the  weeks  went 
on  succeeded  each  other  and  passed  to  that  safe  and 
silent  grave,  although  it  hurt  her  somewhat  as  though 
she  slew  a  living  thing  to  consign  those  ardent,  tender, 
faithful  words  to  the  dumb,  unmeasured  depths  which 
mirrored  the  stars  and  the  planets  and  the  moon-rays, 
and  sometimes  were  white  with  showers  of  acacia 
blossoms,  and  sometimes  moved  and  muttered 
sullenly,  as  seismic  forces  troubled  their  subterranean 
springs,  but  which  never  gave  back  what  was  given 
to  them  :  whether  written  word,  or  faded  flower,  dead 
dragon-fly,  or  dropped  plume  of  wounded  kestrel,  or 
tears  which  fell  from  a  woman's  eyes  as  she  leaned 
over  its  moss-grown  parapet. 

It  never  occurred  to  Ilia  to  send  the  letters  back  to 
Othyris.  It  would  have  seemed  to  her  too  harsh  and 
thankless  an  act  to  the  man  by  whom  the  gates  of 
the  House  of  the  Immortals  had  been  opened  to  the 
body  of  Platon  Illyris.  So  his  letters  did  Othyris  this 
service,  that  gradually  he  became  in  her  sight  the 
writer  of  them  rather  than  aught  else ;  no  longer 
only  the  King's  son,  the  descendant  of  Theodoric  of 
Gunderode,  the  hereditary  enemy  of  the  Illyris.  In 
his  presence  she  never  forgot  this ;  but  in  his  letters 
she  did.  In  them,  one  human  heart  spoke  to  another : 
that  was  all.  The  finest  ruses  of  the  studied  seducer 
could  not  have  served  him  better  than  did  the  simple, 
natural,  and  imprudent  impulse  which  had  moved  him 
to  write  thus  to  her. 

Sentiment  and  sensuality  were  alike  unknown  to 
Ilia.  Fear  was  a  stranger  to  her  temper.  She  was 
an  Illyris.  Something  of  the  fire  of  Argileion,  some- 
thing of  the  steel  of  Samaris  had  entered  into  her 


xxvi  HELIANTHUS  413 

blood  ;  she  would  have  gone  to  the  stake  without  a 
visible  tremor  ;  she  would  have  borne  torture  without 
a  cry  ;  she  was  brave  with  the  bravery  transmitted  to 
her  by  great  men ;  but,  even  as  her  young  bosom 
was  soft  and  flower-like,  so  her  young  heart  had  its 
weakness ;  her  affections  were  dormant,  but  they 
were  alive ;  and  as  the  bosom  would  fill  with  milk 
for  the  unborn  child,  so  would  the  soul  fill  with  the 
desire  of  unrealised  joys.  At  her  heart  her  youth 
was  living  as  it  was  living  in  the  light  of  her  eyes,  in 
the  gloss  of  her  hair,  in  the  blue  of  her  veins,  in  the 
roundness  of  her  breasts  :  that  sleeping  youth  which 
now  awoke  in  her,  tremulous,  virgin,  and  afraid,  but 
living.  The  well  in  which  the  letters  of  Elim  were 
thrown  was  to  her  as  the  magic  crystal  in  which  the 
destiny  of  those  who  gazed  therein  was  mirrored. 
She  was  afraid  of  what  she  saw,  but  she  saw  it. 
Their  sentences  seemed  to  stand  out  under  the 
stars  ;  their  words  seemed  echoed  from  the  deep 
waters  down  in  the  earth.  When  the  nightingales 
came  with  the  irises  and  the  windflowers  they  seemed 
to  sing  of  them  and  of  nothing  else. 

She  was  calmer,  stronger,  more  self-controlled, 
than  most  women  of  her  years.  She  had  dwelt 
within  reach  of  the  frost  of  a  great  lone  soul,  and 
it  had  chilled  her  youth  in  her ;  she  had  been  led 
to  see  as  an  old  man,  alone  with  his  memories,  had 
seen  a  world  unworthy  of  and  ungrateful  to  him. 


CHAPTER   XXVII 

OTHYRIS  had  been  in  solitude  with  the  serried  ranks 
of  the  stone  hills  between  him  and  the  world  of  men 
during  six  weary  months,  when  the  most  unlooked- 
for  stroke  of  fate  opened  the  gates  of  his  prison 
and  called  him  back  to  life.  Relays  of  mounted 
messengers,  for  there  was  no  telegraph  from  any  place 
to  this  remote  spot,  brought  him  an  order  from  his 
father  to  come  to  the  capital  at  once  with  all  speed : 
his  eldest  brother  was  dangerously  ill  with  angina. 

Theo  ill !  Othyris  could  not  credit  it.  Theo,  the 
concentration  of  robust,  self-satisfied,  brutal  and 
arrogant  manhood,  brought  down  to  the  same  level 
as  the  beggar  starved  by  the  roadside,  a  conscript 
slain  by  a  sunstroke  on  a  march,  a  miner  suffocated 
by  the  noxious  fumes  of  a  gas !  It  was  incredible. 
Rigid  as  a  suit  of  armour,  all-sufficient  to  himself  as 
a  deity,  unbending  as  a  rod  of  iron,  as  sure  of  his 
own  wisdom  as  a  high  priest  of  his,  full  of  blood,  of 
health,  of  authority,  of  food  and  wine,  and  muscular 
force  —  Theo,  who  believed  in  doctors  as  prophets, 
who  had  his  residences  deluged  by  disinfectants,  who 
had  always  been  sure  that  any  one  who  was  ill  was  so 
through  his  or  her  own  fault,  —  Theo,  whose  health 
and  strength  were  as  great  as  those  of  prize-bull  on 

414 


CHAP,  xxvii         HELIANTHUS  415 

a  pasture,  had  contracted  a  fatal  malady  :  that  of  the 
angina. 

How  he  had  contracted  it,  neither  he  nor  his 
physicians  and  surgeons  could  tell.  He  remembered 
that  a  fly  had  flown  down  his  throat  as  he  had  ridden 
through  the  home  woods  of  one  of  his  country-places 
to  a  slaughter  of  wild  boars.  The  fly  might  possibly 
have  brought  the  infection  from  some  sick  plebeian 
throat.  Why  would  not  common  people  all  go  into 
hospitals  when  they  felt  that  anything  was  the  matter 
with  them  ?  There  they  were  safe  out  of  the  way 
of  others,  and  were  useful  to  the  Faculty  as  studies 
in  corpore  vilil  When  he  went  home  he  could  not 
eat  any  dinner ;  he  felt  a  brackish,  nauseous  taste  in 
his  mouth  ;  his  throat  was  hoarse  and  uncomfortable  ; 
he  had  a  difficulty  in  swallowing.  The  Court 
physcians  looked  very  grave.  In  the  morning,  to  the 
consternation  of  his  wife,  his  doctors,  and  his  house- 
hold, the  disease  had  fully  declared  itself;  he  was 
very  ill ;  his  father  was  informed  ;  he  became  at  once 
grotesque  and  piteous ;  and  death,  which  lends 
dignity  and  pathos  to  the  most  humble  of  creatures, 
stripped  him  bare  of  all  his  pompous  greatness ;  the 
butchered  steer  for  which  he  had  felt  no  compassion 
had  gained  from  death  more  sorrowful  nobility  than 
he.  At  sunrise  on  the  third  day  the  great  bell  of 
St.  Athanasius,  tolling  in  long  solemn  notes,  told 
the  city  of  Helios  that  the  heir  to  the  throne  was  no 
more. 

His  wife,  who  had  been  sacrificed  to  his  tyrannies 
for  fourteen  sunless  and  imprisoned  years,  wept  for 
him  tears  which  she  sincerely  believed  to  be  those 
of  a  sincere  sorrow. 

His  little  daughters,  who  had  never  heard  his  step 


4i6  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

without  fear,  or  been  summoned  to  his  presence 
without  apprehension,  seeing  their  mother's  woe, 
were  moved  to  an  innocent  and  unconscious 
hypocrisy,  and  did  not  dare  to  whisper  even  to 
each  other  that  a  load  as  of  lead  was  lifted  off  their 
childish  souls. 

The  shops  were  closed  ;  the  muffled  bells  tolled ; 
the  nobility  and  the  bourgeoisie  wore  mourning ; 
the  nation  made  believe  that  it  was  intensely  shocked, 
intensely  grieved,  and  mute  out  of  fear ;  but  at  its 
heart  it  was  glad,  and  beyond  all  the  populace  was 
glad,  that  the  heir  to  the  throne  was  now  the  man  it 
loved. 

The  one  mourner  who  felt  as  much  regret  as  his 
stolid  egotism  could  permit  him  to  feel  at  any  time 
was  the  King.  Theo  could  have  been  trusted  to 
continue  all  the  traditions  of  the  House  of  Gunde- 
rode ;  Theo  would  never  have  yielded  to  maudlin 
sentiment  or  have  stooped  to  popular  dictation. 

Theo  would  have  always  slept  booted  and  spurred. 
Under  him,  Helianthus  would  have  been  a  careful 
copy  in  miniature  of  the  great  Guthonic  empire,  all 
its  natural  instincts  stamped  out  of  it,  all  its  youth 
weighted  with  musket  and  haversack,  all  its  free 
speech  silenced,  all  its  gaiety  eclipsed,  all  its  energies 
crushed  under  one  order,  — (  Obey.' 

When  John  of  Gunderode  realised  that  his  second 
son  was  now  unavoidably  designated  as  his  own 
immediate  successor,  he  cursed  the  crookedness  and 
crabbedness  which  makes  circumstance  jeer  at  mortals, 
and  the  undesired  always  become  the  inevitable.  All 
his  rigour,  all  his  severity,  all  his  acuteness,  all  his 
unmercifulness  could  not  give  him  the  power  to 
shape  and  control  the  futurity  of  events. 


xxvn  HELIANTHUS  417 

The  death  of  his  heir-apparent  was  a  greater  blow 
to  the  King  than  any  he  had  ever  suffered  except  the 
enforced  disarmament  of  his  carefully  prepared 
expedition  for  war  in  the  Dark  Continent.  He 
could  have  trusted  Theo  implicitly  to  move  on  his 
own  lines,  to  govern  with  his  own  measures,  to  follow 
his  own  example  in  all  ways.  With  Theo  the  jagged 
bit  would  have  pressed  firmer  on  the  sensitive  mouth 
of  the  blood-mare,  and  the  knotted  whip  would  have 
cut  wounds  unceasingly  on  the  nervous,  trembling, 
and  highly-bred  creature.  Theo  would  have  walked 
in  the  steps  of  his  father,  and  being  without  even  his 
father's  measure  of  intelligence  would  have  known 
no  law  but  force.  Under  Theo,  Helianthus  would 
have  been  flogged  on  the  road  to  Guthonic  measures, 
Guthonic  despotism,  Guthonic  brutality,  and  the 
strange  Guthonic  mixture  of  science  and  superstition 
and  militarism  would  have  been  forced  down  the 
throat  of  the  nation  as  a  veterinary  thrusts  a  medicine 
down  the  throat  of  a  mare.  The  Guthonic  empire 
had  been  the  idol  and  ideal  of  the  dead  prince.  But 
dead  he  was,  in  the  prime  of  his  early  manhood ; 
and  in  his  place  stood  Elim. 

Never  in  all  his  life  before  had  John  of  Gunderode 
realised  his  own  helplessness  before  the  sledge- 
hammer of  accident  and  the  chances  of  mortality. 
His  stubborn  and  unbending  spirit  realised  for  once 
its  own  impotency  and  incapacity.  He  could  not 
save  his  eldest-born  from  the  darkness  of  the  tomb, 
and  he  could  not  alter  the  succession  to  the  throne. 
His  olive  cheek  grew  greyer,  his  cold  eyes  harder,  he 
smoked  unceasingly,  he  scarcely  ever  spoke,  and  when 
he  did  he  growled  like  an  angry  mastiff.  For  three 
days  he  scarcely  ate ;  and  in  place  of  his  burgundies 


4i8  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

and  bordeaux  he  drank  brandy.  Every  one  has  his 
own  way  of  mourning ;  this  was  his.  On  the  fourth 
evening  he  took  up  the  menu  card  of  his  dinner  and 
said  the  cook  was  a  fool.  On  the  fifth  day  he 
resumed  his  usual  manner  of  life.  But  in  his  silent 
soul,  tight  shut  as  a  bivalve  on  a  rock,  there  was  a 
bitter  fury  of  regret,  a  sombre  rage  of  useless 
sorrow. 

Hydaspe  was  at  a  distance  of  over  twenty  hours 
from  the  capital ;  the  railway  only  went  half  the  way, 
and  the  rest  of  the  journey  was  made  by  relays  of 
horses.  When  Othyris  reached  Helios  he  was  met 
by  the  tidings  that  his  brother  was  dead.  What  he 
had  most  dreaded  had  come  to  pass.  He  himself 
was  heir-apparent  to  the  throne. 

He  covered  his  face  with  his  hands,  and  great 
tears  forced  themselves  through  his  fingers.  His 
sorrow  was  not  for  Theo,  but  for  himself;  the 
burden  of  a  power  he  abhorred  seemed  to  lie  on  him 
like  a  rock  rolled  on  to  the  breast  of  a  living  man. 
If  only  the  little  child  had  lived  !  As  he  drove  to 
his  residence  a  murmur  of  delight  and  of  respectful 
welcome  rose  from  the  crowds  in  the  streets  as  they 
recognised  his  equipage,  although  the  blinds  were 
drawn.  The  cheers  were  checked  immediately  by  the 
city  guards,  but  the  joy  was  in  the  hearts  of  the  people. 
Their  darling  was  now  some  day  to  be  their  ruler. 
1  He  will  reign  over  us,'  they  thought,  t  and  then 
there  will  be  no  more  men  to  poke  us  in  the  ribs 
and  drag  us  off  to  prison.'  They,  like  the  populace 
of  every  nation,  imagined  that  a  sovereign  could  do 
as  he  chose,  and  knew  nothing  of  the  innumerable 
threads  which  bind  him  like  Gulliver.  There  was 


xxvii  HELIANTHUS  419 

a  dense  crowd  gathered  in  the  Square  of  the  Dioscuri, 
and  although  the  people  could  not  see  Othyris  as  his 
carriage  passed  rapidly  between  the  gates  of  his 
palace,  all  the  force  of  the  Guards  of  Helios  could 
not  prevent  a  great  muffled  shout  of  welcome 
rolling  down  the  air  and  reaching  him  in  his 
chamber. 

*  They  care  for  me,  they  believe  in  me,'  he 
thought.  '  Alas,  poor  people  !  What  more  power 
to  serve  them  shall  I  ever  have  than  a  gilded  puppet 
on  a  carnival  car ! ' 

He  could  not  feel  regret  for  Theo  ;  he  knew  that 
Theo,  as  ruler,  would  have  treated  the  people  of 
Helianthus  as  a  brute  treats  a  timid  colt  or  a  sickly 
wife.  Theo  had  prided  himself  on  his  hardness 
and  recklessness,  and  nothing  could  have  broken  his 
backbone  of  steel  except  the  grip  of  that  skeleton- 
king  who  makes  all  other  kings  lie  low  as  paupers. 

Othyris  sorrowed  for  himself,  on  whose  life  fell  the 
crushing  glacier  of  impending  power;  he  sorrowed 
for  the  nation  who  would  look  to  him  for  so  much 
and  to  whom  he  could  give  so  little ;  he  sorrowed 
for  the  love  of  his  life,  more  distant  from  him  in 
his  freedom  and  what  the  world  deemed  splendour 
than  she  had  been  in  his  captivity  and  solitude. 

The  great  bell  of  the  Cathedral  tolled  with  its 
deep  brazen  tongue,  and  all  the  chimes  of  churches 
and  chapels  resounded  in  echo,  proclaiming  the 
death  of  one  for  whom  all  the  land  of  Helianthus 
was  supposed  to  mourn  as  a  mother  the  loss  of  her 
first-born.  Ilia  heard  the  swell  of  the  great  threnody 
as  it  rose  upwards  from  the  city  below,  joining  the 
booming  of  the  surf  upon  the  shore. 


4*0  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

f  Who  is  dead  ? '  she  asked  Maia,  startled  and 
vaguely  apprehensive.  c  Some  one  in  high  place.' 

'  The  eldest  son  of  the  King,'  said  the  woman. 
f  He  died  in  the  night  of  that  fungus  which  grows 
in  the  throat.' 

4  The  Crown  Prince  dead  !     Then  ! ' 

'  It  is  the  prince  Elim  who  will  reign,'  said 
Mai'a. 

The  waves  of  deep  and  solemn  sound  joined 
with  the  anger  of  a  wind-driven  sea  on  the  beach 
below. 

c  It  is  a  cruel  fate/  thought  Ilia;  she  knew  that 
to  him  of  all  others  it  would  seem  so.  She  remem- 
bered the  words  of  Illyris :  s  If  he  lead  the  people 
or  if  he  forsake  the  people,  either  way  he  will  repent. 
To  rule  you  must  have  iron  in  you.  He  has  silver ; 
but  silver  will  not  make  a  sword-blade.' 

All  night  long  the  bells,  great  and  small,  tolled 
all  over  the  country,  in  cities  and  townships  and 
hamlets,  in  lonely  churches  on  bare  hillsides,  and  in 
monasteries  by  lakes  and  streams  ;  and  in  the  chapels 
of  feudal  castles,  and  on  the  solitary  shores  by  the 
sea,  from  the  Mare  Magnum  to  the  Rhaetian  moun- 
tains, the  tongues  of  bronze  told  all  the  land  that 
the  heir  to  the  throne  was  dead.  But  in  the  silent 
heart  of  Helianthus  there  was  no  sorrow ;  there  was 
only  gladness,  mute  and  timid  gladness,  hiding  like 
a  hunted  hare,  and  rejoicing  because  the  man  they 
loved  would  one  day  or  another  rule  over  them.  In 
their  ignorance  and  their  credulity  the  people  believed 
that  he  would  change  the  whole  face  of  the  country, 
set  a  barn  of  plenty  beside  every  poor  man's  hearth, 
lift  the  musket  and  the  knapsack  from  every  strip- 


xxvn  HELIANTHUS  421 

ling's  back,  and  make  the  golden  corn  grow  on  every 
stony  plain.  In  their  ignorance  they  could  not  tell 
that  in  the  kingdom  of  men  individual  character 
can  change  little  in  the  lot  of  the  multitude  or  in 
the  burdens  borne  by  them.  Though  Solomon  in 
all  his  glory,  or  Trajan  in  all  his  justice,  were  to 
reign  in  this  actual  time,  he  could  not  alter  by 
a  hair's  breadth,  by  a  gramme's  weight,  the  pressure 
of  poverty,  the  disparity  of  fates,  the  irony  of 
circumstance,  the  brutality  of  war,  the  satire  of 
success,  the  vast  misery  of  the  majority.  But  the 
people  do  not  know  that. 


CHAPTER   XXVIII 

OTHYRIS  had  no  sleep  that  night.  He  felt  like  a 
man  who  lies  pressed  down  under  a  rock  which  has 
fallen  on  him,  leaving  him  breath  and  brain  to  suffer, 
but  with  no  power  to  rise  and  move. 

With  the  change  of  position  went  such  liberty  and 
such  privacy  as  he  had  hitherto  enjoyed.  His  life 
henceforward  belonged  entirely  to  others.  He  had 
never  seriously  feared  the  possibility  of  his  own  future 
reign.  His  eldest  brother,  risks  of  sport  apart,  had 
seemed  a  man  certain  of  long  life,  as  he  had  always 
been  of  health  and  strength.  When  he  had  thought 
of  his  own  possible  accession  it  had  been  with  little 
apprehension  of  such  a  fate  becoming  ever  a  reality. 

It  was  but  half  a  year  ago  that  he  had  heard  the 
same  outcries  of  popular  affection  rise  from  the  same 
square  and  the  same  surrounding  streets;  he  could  not 
doubt  the  preference  of  the  people  for  himself.  But 
to  what,  in  its  uttermost,  could  it  lead  ?  Only  to  civil 
war.  His  father  was  not  a  man  to  take  a  passage  in 
a  steamer  at  the  first  intimation  to  him  of  his  own 
unpopularity.  If  fully  convinced  of  it,  he  might 
prefer  his  accumulated  scrip  to  a  struggle  with  a 
hostile  people  ;  but  he  would  not  be  easily  convinced, 
and  he  had  the  temper  of  the  bull-dog. 

The  night  was  moonlit  and  serene ;  across  the 

422 


CHAP,  xxvin        HELIANTHUS  423 

masses  of  foliage  of  his  gardens  he  could  see  the 
distant  peaks  of  Mount  Atys,  faint  and  ghastly 
against  the  starlit  skies  on  the  other  side  of  the  bay 
of  Helios. 

Was  Ilia  sleeping  under  the  guard  of  those  snows 
as  virginal  as  the  white  hills  of  her  breast  ?  Had  she 
any  memory  in  her  dreams  of  him  ?  Was  he  not 
farther  away  from  her  than  ever,  now  that  he  was 
direct  heir  to  that  crown  which  had  been  seized  by 
Theodoric  ? 

The  overwhelming  desire  to  be  in  her  presence 
was  stronger  than  any  prudence,  either  for  his  own 
sake  or  hers.  Six  months  had  passed  since  he 
had  looked  upon  her  face.  The  night  was  the  long 
night  of  October  ;  it  had  been  evening  when  he  had 
entered  Helios  ;  and,  under  the  plea  of  fatigue,  he 
had  seen  only  two  or  three  of  his  gentlemen,  the 
most  faithful  and  attached.  When  he  dismissed 
these  and  retired  for  the  night,  he  said  to  himself: 
1  She  rises  with  the  sun  at  all  seasons  ;  I  can  go  there 
at  dawn  and  return  by  eight  o'clock  in  the  forenoon.' 

His  absence  would  probably  be  noticed  by  his 
household,  but  he  knew  that  he  could  trust  the 
most  devoted  of  them  to  conceal  it  from  the  rest ; 
they  would  attribute  it  to  some  amatory  tryst.  He 
did  what  he  had  often  done  when  on  less  innocent 
errands  bent :  he  went  down  into  his  gardens  and 
opened  a  little  postern  gate  which  led  into  the  courts 
at  the  back  of  the  palace  where  the  stables,  coach- 
houses, and  other  buildings  were  situated.  All  was 
still  and  closed,  men  and  animals  slumbered ;  the 
sentinels  stationed  there  challenged,  then  recognising 
him,  presented  arms.  He  opened  the  door  of  the 
spacious  line  of  loose  boxes,  in  which  his  riding  horses 


424  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

were  kept ;  awakened  one  of  his  fleetest  favourites, 
saddled  her,  and  led  her  out  by  one  of  the  gates,  the 
sentinels  of  course  remaining  immovable.  He  was 
sure  of  their  silence.  He  locked  the  door  of  the 
courtyard  behind  him,  holding  the  mare  by  her  bridle; 
then  mounted  and  rode  towards  the  Gate  of  Olives 
on  the  other  side  of  the  city. 

It  was  scarcely  daybreak ;  heavy  mists  hung  over 
the  sea,  and  as  he  went  down  the  southern  quay  the 
air  blew  on  him  cold  and  refreshing  as  a  draught  from 
a  mountain  stream.  Some  fishermen,  some  men-of- 
war  sailors,  some  dockyard  labourers,  alone  passed 
him ;  the  sentinels  on  the  quay  saluted  as  their 
comrades  had  done ;  there  was  no  one  else  abroad  in 
the  dusk  of  the  chilly  autumn  morn  of  which  the 
shadows  and  the  vapours  hid  Mount  Atys  from  his 
sight.  He  rode  as  fast  as  it  was  possible  to  do  on 
the  slippery  marble  of  the  paven  roads,  and  when  he 
reached  the  barrier  of  the  south-west  gate  the  way  to 
it  was  blocked  by  long  strings  of  ox  carts,  and  mule 
carts,  and  flocks  and  cattle,  and  laden  asses,  and 
peasants  mounted  and  on  foot,  who  had  waited 
wearily  there  ever  since  the  small  hours  of  the 
night. 

'  The  accursed  Octroi ! '  thought  Othyris.  (  The 
most  brutal  of  all  the  taxes,  save  the  blood-tax ! 
Can  they  find  no  better  way  to  get  the  money 
they  squander  than  to  keep  the  husbandman  out 
of  his  bed  two-thirds  of  the  night,  and  make 
his  poor  animals  footsore  and  famished  before 
sunrise  ? ' 

The  guards,  sleepy  and  sullen,  were  drawing  back 
the  huge  bolts  of  the  iron  gates,  swearing  savagely 
at  the  throngs  gathered  there.  With  a  sharp  and 


xxvni  HELIANTHUS  425 

stern  rebuke  to  them,  as  they,  in  fear  and  trem- 
bling, recognised  him,  Othyris  passed  through  under 
the  ancient  portcullis  into  the  familiar  country  road 
which  wound  up  into  the  hills  beyond.  When  he 
had  got  rid  of  the  waiting  crowd  of  patient  labourers 
the  way  was  clear.  The  day  was  fully  risen  ;  the  fresh 
scents  of  the  fields  were  blown  about  on  the  change- 
ful winds,  the  wreaths  of  mists  were  drifting,  whiter 
and  whiter  at  each  moment ;  the  great  crests  of  the 
Helichrysum  hills  were  lifted  one  by  one  out  of  the 
clouds.  He  rode  as  fast  as  the  steepness  of  the  path 
would  permit,  towards  that  hermitage  which  had 
been  scarcely  absent  an  hour  from  his  thoughts  since 
he  had  last  been  there  on  that  memorable  day  when 
the  people  of  Helios  had  remembered  Illyris.  Every 
knot  of  thyme  or  clump  of  tussock  grass  beside  the 
path,  all  the  falling  waters,  some  broad  and  deep  as 
torrents,  some  mere  threads  of  rippling  moisture,  all 
the  great  trees  leaning  down  over  the  rocks  and 
myrtle  bushes,  all  were  familiar  and  welcome  to  him, 
and  as  the  morning  light  widened  and  the  winds 
moderated,  the  repose  and  beauty  of  the  place  sank 
like  balm  into  his  soul.  It  was  still  so  early  that  the 
dews  were  heavy  and  the  sun  had  not  reached  these 
woods  ;  only  a  clear  and  solemn  light  awakened  the 
woodlarks  and  the  redcaps,  and  shone,  green  and 
transparent,  through  the  branches  of  the  oaks  and 
olives. 

His  heart  beat  fast,  and  anxiety  quickened  his 
breath  as  he  drew  nearer  and  nearer  to  the  house 
and  passed  the  spot  where  he  had  met  Ilia  beside 
the  old  man's  bier.  That  shyness  of  the  true  lover, 
which  he  had  never  felt  before,  came  over  him  and 
made  him  fear  that  he  should  have  no  welcome.  To 


426  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

all  others  he  was  the  heir  of  the  throne,  to  her  he 
was  but  her  humble  servant  in  his  own  sight,  and 
less  than  that  in  hers.  Had  his  letters  made  any  way 
for  him  into  her  sympathies?  He  could  not  tell.  He 
feared  that  there  was  no  response  in  her  to  his  own 
feelings.  His  soul  had  crossed  the  gulf  of  difference 
which  divided  them,  but  hers  remained  aloof  upon 
a  distant  shore. 

It  was  still  early  in  the  earliest  hours  of  morning 
when  Othyris  reached  the  last  portion  of  the  bridle- 
path up  which  it  was  possible  to  urge  a  horse.  He 
heard  the  sound  of  plough-oxen  being  urged  by  a 
human  voice,  but  they  were  distant,  far  down  in  the 
twilight  of  the  foliage,  and  he  saw  nearer  to  him  two 
little  lads  with  wooden  tubs  on  their  shoulders  — 
such  tubs,  cone-shaped,  as  are  used  to  carry  water  in 
drought  or  grapes  in  vintage-time.  No  doubt  they 
were  the  younger  sons  of  Janos,  going  to  gather  roots 
or  fruits  that  did  not  grow  at  this  altitude.  He 
called  to  them  and  they  stumbled  up  through  the 
rank  grass,  frightened  but  obedient,  for  they  recog- 
nised him.  He  gave  them  the  bridle  of  the  mare  to 
hold,  and  said  a  word  in  her  ear  which  she  under- 
stood, bidding  her  wait  there ;  then  he  went  up  on 
foot  to  the  house,  standing  in  the  deep  shadows  of 
its  great  trees. 

He  saw  Ilia  on  the  threshold ;  she  was  throwing 
grain  to  the  pigeons  ;  the  tamed  dove  of  Illyris  sat 
on  her  shoulder,  and  watched  its  wilder  cousins  eat 
and  fight  and  flutter. 

She  looked  so  serene,  so  content,  so  wholly  satis- 
fied with  these  simple  things,  with  only  that  shadow 
of  sadness  which  the  death  of  Illyris  had  left  her, 
that  Othyris  could  not  think  that  he  had  been  re- 


xxvin  HELIANTHUS  427 

membered  or  regretted.  He  paused  on  the  edge  of 
the  rough  grass  and  the  wild  rose-bushes. 

His  shadow  fell  across  the  turf,  and  the  dog  Ajax 
came  towards  him  with  welcome  and  recognition. 
She  looked  up  and  let  fall  the  boxwood  bowl  of  grain. 
She  did  not  speak.  She  stood  still  in  the  shock  of 
surprise ;  she  had  not  known  that  he  had  arrived  in 
Helios. 

'  Have  I  done  wrong  ? '  he  said,  as  he  stood  with 
uncovered  head.  l  May  I  hope  for  welcome  ?  Or,  if 
that  is  too  much,  for  pardon  ?  ' 

She  was  silent  still ;  he  could  not  see  on  her  coun- 
tenance any  expression  of  her  emotions,  any  reflec- 
tion of  her  mind  ;  she  stood  with  the  flock  of  pigeons 
at  her  feet ;  the  dove  had  flown  on  to  the  ivy  of  the 
roof.  Was  she  indifferent  ?  Was  she  angered  ? 
Was  she  thinking  of  the  change  in  his  position,  or  of 
the  confessions  of  his  letters  ?  He  could  not  tell. 
With  his  hand  on  the  dog's  head  he  stood  before 
her. 

4  Have  you  no  word  for  me  ?  '  he  said  humbly. 

1  What  would  you  have  me  say  ? '  she  murmured. 
'  What  have  I  to  do  with  you  ?  You  are  to  rule  in 
Helianthus.' 

*  In  some  far-off  future  —  or  more  likely  never. 
Such  a  change  was  always  possible.  What  has  it  to 
do  with  you  and  me  ?  Will  you  not  let  me  enter  ? 
Enter  at  least  into  his  chamber  ?' 

£  If  you  wish.' 

She  drew  back  and  signed  to  him  to  pass  her. 
Emotion,  embarrassment,  astonishment,  were  all  so 
unusual  in  her  life,  so  alien  to  her  temperament,  that 
they  confused  her ;  she  could  not  either  welcome  or 
repulse  him.  All  he  had  done  for  her  forbade 


428  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

the  one  ;  all  he  had  written  to  her,  and  all  that 
circumstance  made  him  and  gave  him,  forbade  the 
other. 

*  I  cannot  pass  before  you,'  he  said  with  a  smile. 
She  understood ;  he  might  be  what  he  would  to 

the  rest  of  the  world  ;  there  at  Aquilegia  he  chose 
to  be  only  the  scholar,  the  disciple,  the  pilgrim,  who 
had  stood  before  the  hero  of  Argileion  and  Samaris. 

She  entered  the  house  and  opened  the  door  of  the 
book-room,  in  which  the  hundreds  of  volumes,  the 
great  leather  chair,  the  elm  wood  table,  laden  with 
papers  and  old  manuscripts,  were  all  as  they  had 
been  in  the  lifetime  of  the  Master. 

Othyris  stood  silent  a  few  moments  in  respectful 
memory  as  men  may  stand  beside  a  tomb. 

Then  he  turned  to  Ilia. 

f  You  received  my  letters?' 

<  Yes.' 

c  Did  you  read  them  ? ' 

A  faint  colour  rose  over  her  face.  { Yes,  and  then 
I  destroyed  them.* 

'  Why  ?  Do  you  think  me  a  coward,  or  what  they 
said  untrue  ? ' 

*  No,  neither.' 

(  Could  you  not  have  answered  them  ? ' 
s  Silence  answered  them.' 

*  Silence  means  many  things.' 

*  I  thought  you  would  understand  —  between  you 
and  me  there  can  be  no  correspondence,  there  can  be 
no  sympathy.' 

4  Why?' 

1  Why  ?  I  have  often  told  you.  Now  it  is  more 
impossible  than  ever.  You  are  the  heir  to  the 
throne.' 


xxvm  HELIANTHUS  419 

*  No  one,  no  law,  no  nation,  can  make  me  accept 
that  position  unless  I  choose.  I  can  say  nothing 
more  than  I  have  in  those  letters.  I  am  yours  in 
any  way,  by  any  bond,  you  choose.'  His  words 
broke  down  in  an  impatient  sigh.  *  But  nothing 
that  I  can  say  moves  you  more  than  a  marble  mask 
is  moved.  And  yet ' 

He  was  about  to  say  :  f  I  have  suffered  for  your 
sake,  I  have  lost  a  part  of  my  life  ! ' 

But  he  checked  the  words  unuttered.  He  would 
not  remind  her  of  her  debt  to  him. 

Ilia  did  not  answer. 

She  stood  by  the  great  leather  chair  against  the 
casement,  through  which  a  green  light  fell  through 
the  leaves  of  the  ivy.  She  was  prepared  for  his 
words  by  his  letters  ;  but  she  was  unprepared  for 
his  presence,  and  for  the  effect  it  had  on  herself. 
In  the  well  without,  those  letters  of  his  had  perished, 
soaked  in  the  deep,  cold  water  of  the  subterranean 
spring ;  but  many  of  their  lines  had  been  burnt  into 
her  memory  before  she  had  dropped  them  into  their 
tomb.  Their  recollection  made  her  nervous,  timid, 
self-conscious,  ashamed,  all  that  she  had  never  been 
before ;  the  weakness  of  sex  awoke  in  her. 

She  leaned  her  hand  on  the  back  of  the  old  black 
chair  as  if  to  gain  courage  and  strength  from  its 
contact ;  the  green  cool  light  falling  through  the  ivy 
leaves  flickered  on  her  face.  She  felt  the  passion  of 
his  gaze  burn  into  her  inmost  being.  That  he  loved 
her  greatly  she  could  not  doubt ;  that  he  might 
become  dear  to  her  she  felt  with  terror.  She  heard 
the  stern  and  haughty  voice  of  Platon  Illyris  saying  : 
1  What  have  you,  my  daughter,  to  do  with  the 
House  of  Gunderode  ? ' 


430  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

'  Listen,  sir,'  she  said,  gently  but  with  firmness, 
to  Othyris,  ' I  am  sensible  of  all  we  owe  to  you. 
I  am  conscious  of  what  you  have  suffered  for  our 
sakes.  I  grieve  for  it.  I  cannot  repay  you  all  you 
have  done  for  us.  It  is  impossible  to  put  into 
words  my  sense  of  it.  But  do  not  come  here.  You 
only  pain  me,  and  compromise  yourself.  You  be- 
long to  the  people  of  Helianthus.  You  are  not  free 
to  do  what  you  choose  or  what  you  wish.  You  are 
theirs :  at  once  their  lord  and  their  servant.' 
1  But  if  I  will  not  be  either  ? ' 
f  You  cannot  escape  your  obligations.' 

*  Why    not  ?     It  is  a  yoke  laid   on  me    by    the 
accident  of  birth.     I  have  the  right  to  reject  it  if  I 
choose.' 

'  You  could  not  change  yourself  if  you  did,'  she 
said  sadly.  f  You  could  not  wash  the  blood  of 
Theodoric  out  of  your  veins.  You  could  not  be 
otherwise  than  one  of  the  princes  of  his  House 
though  you  beggared  yourself  or  swept  the  streets. 
We  are  what  we  are  born,  till  death  releases  us.' 

*  Those  are  ideas  of  a  world  that  is  dead,'  he  said, 
with  anger  and  impatience.     '  Ideas  of  the  days  of 
blood-feud,  of  inherited    hatreds,   of  Capulet   and 
Montagu,  of  Monteuki  and  Salimbeni.     Surely  we 
belong  to  a  calmer  and  colder  time  when  the  sins  of 
the  father  are  not  visited  on  the  children.     We  have 
lost   much,  but  we  have  gained    something.     The 
chief  of  our  gains  is  surely  the  temperate  spirit  of 
modern  feeling.' 

'  It  is  indifference,  it  is  often  even  mere  cynicism, 
that  which  you  praise.  There  are  wrongs  which 
cannot  die,  which  should  not  die,  as  long  as  memory 
lives.' 


xxvin  HELIANTHUS  431 

*  If  you  had  any  regard  for  me,  you  would  have 
no  memory  but  that.' 

c  Perhaps.' 

She  spoke  almost  sorrowfully,  almost  regretfully. 
What  she  had  felt  for  him  in  his  absence  died  away 
in  his  presence. 

He  felt  that  it  did  so.     It  filled  him  with  despair. 

*  Is  there  any  one  living  fitter  to  reign  in   Heli- 
anthus    than    you  —  fitter    in    body,    in    mind,    in 
race  ? ' 

*  Oh,  sir,  you    are    mad  !  '  she   said    in  mingled 
anger  and  fear.     c  Quite  mad  !     I  !     False  to  all  the 
creeds  and  traditions  I  have  inherited  ?     Apostate  to 
all  the  religion  of  my  people?     Could  1   be  so,  the 
women  of  Helios  would  have  a  right  to  stone  me  in 
their  streets.' 

c  They  would  fling  the  roses  of  Helianthus  under 
your  feet.  Would  to  God  I  could  prove  it  to  you  ! 
You  have  the  blood  in  your  veins  of  the  liberator  of 
this  country.' 

'  Whom  they  allowed  to  live  thirty  years  above 
their  seashore,  poor,  alone,  forgotten  !  They  scarcely 
knew  that  he  was  amongst  them.  Who  buried  him 
where  the  great  dead  lie  ?  You  ;  not  they.' 

f  Yes,  it  was  they,  not  I,  whom  my  father  feared.' 
'  Would  your  father  admit  that  he  feared  them  ?  ' 
1 1  know  not ;  I  know  that  he  did  so.' 
She  was  silent ;  she  felt  that    she  must  seem  to 
him  thankless,  callous,  unworthy  of  all  that  he  had 
done,  and   was  ready   to   do ;   and  her  own  heart 
trembled  within  her ;  she  was  afraid  of  it,  afraid  of 
its  weakness,  afraid  of  its  betrayal  of  herself. 

*  If   I    had    any   feeling  for  you,'  she  said,  with 
more  passion  than  had  been  ever  in  her  voice,  ( if — 


432  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

what  would  it  be  ?  An  insult  to  my  race,  a  curse  to 
myself.  You  ?  You  and  I  ?  It  would  be  sacri- 
lege ! ' 

f  Wherefore  ?  Mutual  love  has  healed  the  wounds 
of  feuds  before  now  in  many  a  human  history.' 

'  It  is  not  a  feud.  It  was  the  betrayal  of  an 
Iscariot,  that  which  your  forefather  did  to  Platon 
Illyris.' 

1  Perhaps,  but  it  was  not  my  sin.' 

f  You  cannot  cleanse  yourself  from  it.  You  may 
be  called  to  ascend  the  throne  to-morrow.' 

{ And  I  would  refuse  the  throne  unless  you 
shared  it.' 

4 1  ?  My  people  would  rise  from  their  graves  to 
strike  me.  How  can  you  say  such  things  to  me  ? ' 

Some  consciousness  of  the  immense  force  of  a 
great  passion  dawned  on  her ;  some  sense  that  it 
was  irresistible  as  a  forest  fire.  She  rose,  and  threw 
her  veil  about  her  head. 

c  These  are  all  useless  words,'  she  said  to  him. 
'  Between  you  and  me  there  is  a  great  gulf  fixed  ;  it 
is  as  deep  as  the  Hellespont,  and  I  will  drown  in  it 
like  Helle.' 

She  entered  the  house,  and  his  heart  sank  within 
him. 

Othyris  found  the  mare  chafing  restlessly  at  her 
inaction,  and  rode  her  at  dangerous  speed  down  the 
steep  road  back  to  Helios  and  through  the  Gate  of 
Olives.  He  was  in  time  to  enter  by  the  back  courts 
of  his  palace,  and  regained  his  apartments  seen  by 
few  of  his  household,  and  confident  that  of  those  few 
none  were  likely  to  be  indiscreet  enough  to  talk  of 
his  absence  in  those  early  morning  hours.  His  life 
had  been  erratic  and  adventurous ;  his  courtiers 


xxvm  HELIANTHUS  433 

knew  well  that  no  quality  in  them  was  so  favourably 
seen  by  him  as  that  of  discretion.  They  knew  him 
too  well  to  anger  him  by  prying  into  his  amorous 
secrets. 


2F 


CHAPTER    XXIX 

THE  funeral  of  the  late  Crown  Prince  was  a  great 
spectacle,  a  military  pageant  of  the  first  order  ;  only 
that  of  the  King  could  have  surpassed  it.  The 
body  was  placed  upon  a  gun-carriage,  like  a  dead 
god  upon  his  altar,  and  the  princes,  his  brothers, 
with  a  galaxy  of  foreign  princes,  their  relations,  fol- 
lowed it ;  all  of  them  in  full  uniform  and  mounted 
on  splendid  chargers.  If  the  music  played  by  the 
massed  bands  had  not  been  so  slow,  so  mournful,  and 
so  solemn,  the  procession  might  easily  have  been 
mistaken  for  a  wedding  march  or  a  conqueror's 
entry.  The  population  of  the  capital  was  in  the 
streets,  dumb,  sullen,  yet  magnetised  by  the  grandeur 
of  the  show.  In  no  city  of  the  world  has  the 
populace  the  courage  to  display  its  disapproval  by 
closing  its  shutters  before  a  pageant. 

At  that  same  hour  another  man  was  being  carried 
to  his  end  ;  carried  a  short  journey  from  the  mattress 
on  which  he  had  died  to  the  dissecting  table  in  the 
floor  below  in  the  great  central  hospital  dedicated  to 
St.  Elizabeth.  He  had  been  a  good  man  all  his 
days,  a  worker  in  the  docks  ;  he  had  reared  a  large 
family  with  honesty  and  kindness  ;  they  had  most  of 
them  emigrated  at  an  age  when  they  began  to  grow 
useful ;  two  only  were  now  alive,  labouring  men  in 

434 


CHAP,  xxix  HELIANTHUS  435 

the  western  hemisphere ;  he  had  been  long  ill  and 
out  of  work;  he  had  suffered  from  tumour  in  the 
liver ;  he  had  been  promised  a  cure  at  the  great 
hospital ;  he  had  found  only  death.  There  was 
none  to  pay  the  fee  which  permits  the  removal  of 
a  body  from  the  hospital ;  his  wife  was  weeping 
miserably  outside  the  gates ;  she  could  not  buy  the 
right  to  bury  him ;  his  remains  were  laid  on  the 
dissecting  table,  and  the  instruments  of  the  students 
searched  his  inmost  parts,  traced  the  network  of  his 
veins,  scooped  out  his  brain,  sawed  his  spine  in 
sections.  The  sounds  of  the  military  music,  the 
passing  of  the  troops,  the  boom  of  the  funeral  guns, 
rolled  through  the  operating-room  from  an  adjacent 
street. 

The  contrasts  of  life  are  too  sharp,  and  its  dispari- 
ties are  too  great. 

At  ten  o'clock  on  the  day  following  the  funeral 
Othyris  went  to  his  first  interview  with  his  father ;  a 
meeting  which  both  would  have  been  equally  willing 
to  avoid  had  such  avoidance  been  possible. 

John  of  Gunderode  received  him  in  the  room  in 
which  he  spent  most  of  his  indoor  hours,  surrounded 
by  the  modern  substitutes  for  the  thunderbolt  of 
Zeus  and  the  wand  of  Proteus.  He  was  seated 
before  his  bureau  on  a  revolving  chair,  and  he 
wheeled  round  and  faced  his  son,  with  a  sign  dis- 
missing the  attendant  officials.  His  olive  cheeks 
were  pale  and  their  flesh  was  flabby ;  his  eyes  were 
sullen  and  restless ;  in  his  teeth  was  the  inevitable 
cigarette  ;  he  had  rarely  known  embarrassment,  but 
he  knew  it  then. 

Othyris  felt  none.    He  was  cold,  resentful,  paying 


436  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

to  the  smallest  iota  all  the  deference  demanded  of 
him  ;  but  to  the  King  this  extreme  ceremony  seemed 
irony,  although  any  lack  of  it  would  have  appeared 
to  him  offence. 

John  of  Gunderode  had  never  felt  impatience 
before ;  but  now  he  was  totally  powerless  to  undo 
this  knot  which  fate  had  tied,  to  rid  himself  of  the 
successor  whom  he  hated,  of  the  revolutionary  whom 
he  feared.  Judging  Othyris  by  himself,  he  opined 
that  now,  being  immediate  heir  to  the  throne,  his 
son  would  cease  to  be  a  revolutionary,  but  would 
not  for  that  reason  cease  to  be  a  foe.  He  was  con- 
vinced that  Elim,  impatient  to  reign,  would  use  his 
popularity  with  the  masses  to  dethrone  himself. 

The  two  men  were  in  strong  contrast.  The 
King's  stout  and  stunted  figure  filled  his  revolving 
writing-chair  without  grace,  his  eyebrows  were  drawn 
together  in  a  gloomy  gravity,  his  skin  was  yellower 
than  before ;  he  had  neglected  to  dye  his  hair,  and 
patches  of  grey  showed  in  it;  his  teeth  were  shut, 
and  scarcely  unclosed  for  speech;  he  looked  like  an 
adjutant,  like  a  merchant,  like  the  head  of  a  depart- 
ment worried  and  incensed  by  matters  offensive  and 
odious  which  could  not  be  altered  or  controlled. 

His  son  stood  before  him  in  the  full  light  from  the 
windows,  pale  as  the  dead  Adonis,  fair  as  the  Sun- 
god  of  the  poets,  tall,  slender,  calm,  and  cold  ;  with 
a  great  weariness  upon  him,  but  with  no  weakness; 
a  man  who  forgot  nothing,  and  who,  if  he  forgave, 
did  so  only  because  his  own  conception  of  duty 
made  it  incumbent  on  him. 

His  father  understood  that  he  himself  had  been  in 
error  in  his  estimate  of  one  whom  he  had  considered 
a  visionary,  an  anarchist,  a  fool.  He  received  an 


xxix  HELIANTHUS  437 

impression  of  his  own  incapacity  to  dominate  his 
successor  which  was  new  and  odious  to  him. 

Force  at  the  present  moment  was  out  of  the 
question.  Persuasion  had  never  been  one  of  the 
methods  of  the  monarch.  What  he  required  in  the 
heir  to  the  Crown  was  a  copy  of  himself,  acquiescence 
in  all  his  own  views  and  acts  ;  a  will  servilely  copying 
his  own  will,  and  promising  him  for  the  future,  when 
he  should  be  no  more,  the  continuation  of  his  own 
influence,  the  development  of  his  own  projects  and 
his  own  home  and  foreign  policy. 

To  hope  for  this  from  Elim  was  to  indulge  in  a 
baseless  vision.  There  could  be  no  continuity  of 
action  and  opinion  between  him  and  a  man  who  was 
in  every  way  his  opposite,  who  had  no  more  similarity 
to  his  own  absolutism  than  Vergniaud  had  to  a  Ver- 
saillais.  If  he  died  that  day  and  Elim  reigned  in  his 
stead,  he  knew  all  that  he  had  done  would  be  undone  : 
that  the  Guthonic  alliance  would  be  broken,  that  the 
military  dominance  would  beat  an  end,  that  the  net- 
work of  policies  which  he  had  been  at  such  pains  to 
weave  would  be  swept  away  like  a  cobweb,  that  the 
whole  future  of  absolutism  which  he  had  built  up 
under  the  cover  of  constitutionalism  would  be  pushed 
down  like  a  child's  sand  castle.  The  country  was 
ready  to  welcome  such  changes  —  setting  aside  its 
bureaucracy  and  some  portion  of  its  aristocracy.  Of 
the  existence  of  revolutionary  feeling  in  the  army 
itself  he  had  been  long  aware.  The  rank  and  file 
were  ready  to  throw  down  their  arms  at  the  first 
propitious  moment. 

His  dead  son  could  have  been  trusted  never  to 
allow  that  moment  to  arrive,  but  his  actual  heir 
would  certainly  hasten  its  advent.  For  the  first 


438  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

time  in  his  reign  his  astute  and  obstinate  mind  found 
itself  baffled.  In  such  difficulties,  the  rulers  of  large 
armies  and  disposers  of  large  exchequers  are  able  to 
launch  their  nation  into  some  racial  feud  or  flattering 
conquest,  and  in  the  ferment  and  wrath  thus  excited 
make  their  peoples  forget  their  hatred  of  compulsory 
service  and  bend  their  backs  under  the  knapsack. 
But  Helianthus  could  not  be  thus  launched  into 
oblivion  and  war-fever.  Her  allies  kept  her  immov- 
able ;  her  finances  were  limited  ;  her  power  to  move 
alone  was  small,  almost  nil ;  in  Europe  her  cannon 
would  not  be  allowed  to  fire ;  in  savage  and  distant 
States  she  had  renounced  her  share  in  that  butchery 
which  is  called  the  crusade  of  civilisation.  Candor, 
since  she  had  become  Imperia,  did  not  allow  her 
friends  to  stop  a  ball  or  hold  a  wicket  in  the  great 
game  she  played  in  the  Dark  Continent.  Now  and 
then  she  called  to  a  crew  of  a  Helianthine  battleship 
to  come  ashore  and  field  for  her  on  some  barbaric 
coast  or  uncertain  frontier  ;  but  this  was  very  rarely, 
and  neither  navy  nor  army  of  Helianthus  dared  move 
without  her. 

All  these  thoughts  passed  through  the  King's 
brain  as  he  sat  in  that  silence  which  was  his  constant 
refuge  in  any  difficult  moment. 

In  his  successor  he  wanted  a  careful  and  exact 
continuance  of  his  own  work  ;  in  Elim  he  could  only 
see  the  destroyer  of  it. 

The  interview  was  ceremonious,  strictly  confined 
to  that  which  the  moment  demanded,  with  a  rigid 
limitation  on  both  sides  to  what  was  necessary  and 
politic.  By  neither  was  there  spoken  a  single 
superfluous  word ;  between  them  there  could 
not  be  either  confidence  or  candour;  they  were 


xxix  HELIANTHUS  439 

enemies,  and  consanguinity  only  intensified  an- 
tagonism. 

The  King  felt  less  contempt  for  his  son  than 
before,  but  he  felt  also,  more  strongly,  that  between 
himself  and  Elim  there  could  never  be  other  than 
enmity  of  the  most  bitter  kind.  He  had  thought 
his  second  son  a  weak  and  dreamy  enthusiast,  but  he 
recognised  now  that  behind  these  ideals  and  phantasies 
which  seemed  so  miserably  absurd  to  himself,  there 
was  something  of  the  iron  of  the  Gunderode  tempera- 
ment, as  yet  latent  but  existent,  and  likely  to  grow 
harder  as  youth  passed.  Whatever  it  might  become, 
he  knew  that  it  would  be  inimical  to  himself,  contrary 
to  all  his  plans,  his  ambitions,  his  ruling  power. 

When  he  had  intimated  to  Othyris  that  in  his 
present  position  it  would  be  necessary  to  renounce 
the  friendships  and  preferences  which  had  been 
notably  his  choice  hitherto,  his  son  had  briefly  replied 
that  he  could  not  be  unfaithful  either  to  his  friends 
or  to  his  faiths ;  and  the  monarch  had  felt  that  he 
would  have  no  power  to  make  him  so. 

'  You  must  surely  perceive  the  indecency  of  such 
sentiments  in  your  changed  position,'  he  said  with 
ill-restrained  wrath. 

'  I  perceive,  sire,  the  indecency  of  changing  a 
principle  merely  because  a  situation  has  changed,' 
replied  Othyris.  ( I  hope  that  I  shall  never  be  guilty 
of  it.' 

*  The  heir  to  the  throne  cannot  be  a  revolutionist! ' 
'  I  have  led  no  revolution,  sire.' 

'  Because  you  were  arrested  in  time  to  prevent  your 
doing  so.' 

*  Your  Majesty  has  been  misinformed.     I  attended 
a  funeral ;  I  assisted  in  a  reparation  ;  I  did  no  more.' 


440  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

'  The  military  court  judged  otherwise.' 

f  I  cannot  help  its  incorrect  opinions.  Your 
Majesty  did  not  deign  to  question  me  yourself.' 

1 1  do  not  consider  that  my  prerogative  extends  to 
interference  with  the  sentences  of  military  tribunals, 
especially  where  a  member  of  my  family  is  the 
offender.  You  had  every  facility  given  you  for 
defence.  If  you  did  not  avail  yourself  of  such 
facilities,  the  fault  was  yours.  Your  replies  offended 
your  judges,  who  certainly  would  have  been  better 
pleased  if  they  could  have  acquitted  you.' 

{ They  did  their  duty  doubtless  as  they  saw  it.  I 
trust  your  Majesty  will  believe  that  I  also  did  mine 
as  I  saw  it.' 

(  There  was  no  question  of  duty  in  your  case. 
There  were  only  insubordination  and  offence.' 

1 1  regret  that  your  Majesty  sees  my  conduct  in 
that  light.' 

The  King  gave  utterance  to  a  short,  harsh  sound, 
half  laugh,  half  curse. 

f  If  I  order  you  now  to  return  to  Hydaspe  and 
fulfil  the  remainder  of  your  sentence  ? ' 

1 1  go,  sir,  of  course,  instantly/ 

His  father's  half-shut,  gloomy,  penetrating  eyes 
looked  at  him  in  inquisitive  scepticism.  He  was 
strongly  tempted  to  take  his  son  at  his  word  and 
send  him  back  to  the  saline  marshes  of  the  east  coast. 
But  his  inclinations  never  ran  away  with  his  judgment 
or  his  passions  with  his  prudence.  His  sense  of  what 
was  best  for  himself  was  always  his  guiding  con- 
sideration. He  knew  how  his  Cabinet,  his  Senate, 
his  Chamber,  his  people  in  general  would  view  such 
an  action. 

1  That  is  impossible  now,'  he   said    curtly.      c  I 


xxix  HELIANTHUS  441 

regret  that  seclusion  and  solitude  have  not  produced 
a  greater  change  in  your  character  and  opinions.  I 
hope  that  the  great  responsibilities  which  have 
devolved  on  you  may  produce  more  effect.' 

With  these  words  he  intimated  that  the  interview 
was  over,  and  turning  to  his  bureau  put  the  acoustic 
tube  to  his  ear. 

There  was  a  secret  chamber  which  opened  out  of 
the  King's  study.  It  had  been  made  when  that 
portion  of  the  Soleia  had  been  builded  by  the 
Byzantine  emperors.  The  gyration  of  the  panel, 
which  was  movable,  was  undiscoverable  by  any  one 
to  whom  the  secret  was  unknown ;  and  it  contained 
a  hidden  lock,  of  which  the  key  had  been  handed 
down  by  Theodoric  to  his  son,  and  by  his  son  to  his 
successor.  An  old  monk  of  an  oriental  monastery 
had  given  the  secret  and  the  key  to  Theodoric  as 
price  of  the  permission  to  his  order  to  remain 
unmolested  on  their  rocky  eyrie  on  the  northern 
mountains  of  Helianthus.  Theodoric  and  the  monk 
had  long  been  dead,  but  the  key  had  been  trans- 
mitted to  the  reigning  monarch ;  and  the  barefooted, 
unwashed,  famished  anchorites  still  paced  their  stony 
corridors,  and  lighted  their  bronze  lamps,  and  intoned 
their  wild  litanies,  in  the  recesses  of  the  Rhaetian 
alps. 

The  sea-front  of  the  Soleia  stood  directly  on  the 
quay,  without  any  intervening  wall  or  garden.  The 
window  of  the  secret  chamber  was  concealed  from 
without ;  it  was  closed  by  a  marble  panel  carved  to 
correspond  with  the  exterior  carvings,  and  turned  on  a 
steel  swivel  of  elaborate  and  ingenious  workmanship. 
It  was  characteristic  of  the  present  King's  carefulness 


442  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

and  prudence  in  all  things  great  and  small  that  he 
remembered  to  keep  the  mechanism  in  good  order, 
and  with  his  own  hands  oiled  it  twice  or  thrice  a  year, 
and  moved  it  to  prevent  rust.  The  chamber  within 
was  square,  small,  lofty  ;  all  of  stone ;  the  signs  of 
the  Zodiac  were  sculptured  on  one  of  the  walls ; 
when  the  narrow  aperture  was  open,  the  person 
within  looked  on  the  great  marble  quay  which 
separated  the  palace  from  the  sea. 

The  key,  which  was  very  small,  the  King  carried  in 
a  locket  containing  a  miniature  of  his  first  wife,  the 
bride  of  his  boyhood.  No  one,  not  even  her  son, 
had  ever  asked  him  to  open  that  locket ;  every  one 
knew  that  its  original  had  been  a  homely,  unlovely 
person,  with  the  ruddy  skin,  the  short-sighted  eyes, 
the  high  cheekbones,  the  large  teeth,  of  the  Guthonic 
physiognomy.  There  were  many  portraits  of  her  in 
the  palaces  and  castles  occupied  by  the  Gunderode, 
and  their  original  had  been  lying  for  over  thirty 
years  under  the  lead  and  cedar  and  silver  of  her  triple 
coffin,  never  remembered  by  her  husband  or  her 
son,  or  by  the  people  who  had  acclaimed  her  on  her 
bridal. 

According  to  the  custom  of  his  House  the  King 
had  confided  the  fact  of  the  existence  of  the  retreat  to 
the  Crown  Prince,  so  that  it  should  be  known  by  his 
successor  in  case  of  his  own  sudden  death.  But  he 
had  never  shown  the  Crown  Prince  more  than  the 
key  and  the  trick  of  the  panel ;  the  less  any  one  of 
his  sons  knew,  the  better;  he  did  not  even  exempt 
the  devotion  of  Theo  from  that  conclusion.  It  was 
also  characteristic  of  him  that  in  all  the  years  during 
which  he  had  been  aware  of  the  existence  of  this 
closet,  no  man  or  woman  had  ever  heard  of  it  from 


xxix  HELIANTHUS  443 

him,  or  seen  him  enter  or  leave  it.  This  was  the 
strength  of  the  King :  he  was  sufficient  to  himself. 

The  secret  had  gone  to  the  grave  with  Theo ;  it 
should,  by  precedent,  be  passed  on  to  the  new  Crown 
Prince ;  the  monarch  was  bound  to  have  one  living 
holder  of  the  knowledge  in  case  of  his  own  sudden 
death  by  disease  or  assassination.  But  John  of 
Gunderode,  as  he  stood  in  the  dim  cell-like  chamber, 
said  to  himself  that  he  would  not  part  with  that 
secret  to  his  present  heir  ;  it  should  sooner  die  with 
himself.  Why  not  ?  It  was  only  a  matter  of 
personal  security ;  a  refuge  in  case  of  personal 
danger ;  it  had  no  importance  to  the  nation,  or 
interest  for  the  State ;  it  was  as  wholly  his  own 
property  as  the  signet-ring  on  his  finger.  Elim 
should  live  and  reign,  if  circumstance  allowed, 
without  that  knowledge.  There  was  so  much  that 
he  was  obliged  to  reveal  to  his  heir ;  to  allow,  to 
share,  to  confide,  so  sorely  against  his  own  will. 
This,  at  least,  he  could  withhold.  Some  day,  to 
have  thus  withheld  it  would  perchance  be  useful. 

This  power  of  unswerving  reticence  was  the  King's 
great  strength,  a  strength  which  made  up  for  what 
was  limited  and  ordinary  in  his  intelligence.  *  Keep 
your  tongue  behind  your  teeth,'  says  the  Helianthine 
proverb,  '  and  you  are  master  of  men.' 

Helianthus,  he  considered,  would  be  too  small  a 
realm  to  hold  both  him  and  Elim.  All  unshared 
knowledge  is  power  of  a  sort ;  he  kept  what  he  had 
got. 

He  looked  through  the  aperture  out  on  to  the 
scene  beneath.  The  southern  quay  of  the  city  was 
immediately  below,  with  its  marble  walls  and  piers, 
its  long  graceful  jetty  running  out  into  the  blue 


444  HELIANTHUS  CHAP. 

water,  its  basins  where  the  royal  craft  of  all  kinds 
Was  anchored,  the  offing  crowded  by  vessels  of  his 
own  and  other  nations,  lying  at  anchor ;  some  for 
defence,  some  for  pleasure,  most  of  them  for  trade. 

The  beauty  of  the  scene  was  great ;  the  gleaming 
marbles,  the  hyacinth-blue  skies,  the  waters  — here  the 
colours  of  a  dove's  throat,  there  of  a  kingfisher's 
wings  ;  here  green  as  an  arum  leaf,  and  there  white  as 
an  arum  flower  —  the  heaven-pointing  masts  and  the 
many-hued  canvas  of  the  shipping,  and  across  the 
bay  the  peaks  and  slopes  of  the  Mount  Atys  range, 
all  made  up  a  picture  of  radiant  charm,  charged 
with  many  august  memories  of  the  past.  But  the 
King  was  not  a  man  to  think  of  such  things  as 
these,  or  note  their  meaning.  He  looked  as  the 
surveyor,  as  the  engineer,  looks  ;  and  in  his  trained 
soldier's  eyes  measured,  studied,  appraised. 

A  shot  from  that  secret  place,  from  a  sure  hand, 
noiseless  and  smokeless,  would  take  certain  death  down 
into  a  crowd  passing  along  the  broad  white  paven 
quay.  No,  he  thought,  his  son  should  not  know  of 
that  chamber.  He  closed  the  aperture,  and  left  the 
cell :  the  panel  fell  back  into  its  place,  its  hinges 
hidden  and  its  lines  united  under  the  carven  wreaths 
of  leaf  and  blossom.  He  was  a  practical  man ; 
having  decided  that  silence  was  the  better  part  he 
kept  silence,  and  dismissed  the  subject  from  his  mind. 

It  was  a  very  orderly  mind ;  it  resembled  a  well- 
arranged  medicine-chest;  every  separate  drug  was 
labelled  and  ready  for  use,  and  if  it  contained  some 
poisons  it  was  only  because  poison  is  as  necessary, 
and  sometimes  as  useful,  and  even  as  healing,  as  is 
the  sedative  or  the  tonic.  Above  all,  he  was  wise  in 
this :  he  never  left  his  medicine-chest  unlocked. 


xxix  HELIANTHUS  445 

The  King  had  been  greatly  incensed  by  the  demon- 
strations of  joy  at  the  return  of  Othyris.  He  con- 
sidered that  the  city  and  the  nation  ought  to  be  dumb 
and  paralysed  by  woe.  The  loss  of  such  a  prince  as 
Theo  seemed  to  him  only  equalled  in  history  by  the 
death  of  Marcellus  ;  a  not  appropriate  parallel.  All 
his  dominant  and  imperious  temper  was  in  revolt  at 
the  subjugation  of  his  will  by  circumstances  over  which 
he  had  no  control.  He  was  accustomed  to  alter,  to 
bend,  to  undo,  to  build  up,  the  circumstances  of  his 
own  life,  and  the  lives  of  others,  with  success  and 
without  interference.  He  could  ill  stoop  to  receive 
the  blows  of  an  undesired  fate,  the  opposition  of  an 
antagonistic  character.  Within  his  own  realm  he 
was  supreme ;  and  the  limitations  enforced  on  him 
outside  it  were  sufficient  annoyance  to  his  arrogant 
temper  without  internecine  or  family  feud. 

The  mere  casual  germ  of  an  ordinary  disease  had 
been  enough  to  alter  and  reverse  all  his  plans,  his 
intentions,  and  his  arbitrary  will.  Before  it  he  had 
been  as  helpless  as  a  pauper  in  a  poorhouse.  He  felt 
rage  rather  than  grief  that  he  should  be  thus  abased 
to  the  level  of  the  ordinary  sons  of  men. 

One  thought  alone  was  prominent  in  his  angry 
mind  :  Elim  must  never  reign. 


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CY  WHITTAKER'S  PLACE.     By  Joseph  C.  Lincoln. 

Illustrated  by  Wallace  Morgan. 

A  Cape  Cod  story  describing  the  amusing  efforts  of  an  el- 
derly bachelor  and  his  two  cronies  to  rear  and  educate  a  little 
girl.    Full  of  honest  fun — a  rural  drama. 
THE  FORGE  IN  THE  FOREST.     By  Charles  G.  D. 

Roberts.    Illustrated  by  H.  Sandham. 
A  story  of  the  conflict  in  Acadia  after  its  conquest  by  the 
British.     A  dramatic  picture  that  lives  and  shines  with  the  in- 
definable charm  of  poetic  romance. 
A  SISTER  TO  EVANGELINE.      By   Charles  G.  D. 

Roberts.    Illustrated  by  E.  McConnell. 
Being  the  story  of  Yvonne  de  Lamourie,  and  how  she  went 
into  exile  with  the  villagers   of  Grand   Pre.     Swift  action, 
fresh  atmosphere,  wholesome  purity,  deep  passion  and  search- 
ing analysis  characterize  this  strong  novel. 
THE  OPENED  SHUTTERS.     By  Clara  Louise  Burn- 
ham.     Frontispiece  by  Harrison  Fisher. 
A  summer  haunt  on  an  island   in  Casco  Bay  is  the  back- 
ground for  this  romance.     A  beautiful  woman,  at  discord  with 
life,  is  brought  to  realize,  by   her  new  friends,  that  she  may 
open  the  shutters  of  her  soul  to  the  blessed  sunlight  of  joy  by 
casting  aside  vanity  and  self  love.     A  delicately  humorous 
work  with  a  lofty  motive  underlying  it  all. 

THE  RIGHT  PRINCESS.  By  Clara  Louise  Burnham. 
An  amusing  story,  opening  at  a  fashionable  Long  Island  re- 
sort, where  a  stately  Englishwoman  employs  a  forcible  New 
England  housekeeper  to  serve  in  her  interesting  home.  How 
types  so  widely  apart  react  on  each  others'  lives,  all  to  ulti- 
mate good,  makes  a  story  both  humorous  and  rich  in  sentiment. 

THE  LEAVEN  OF  LOVE.     By   Clara   Louise   Burn- 
ham.    Frontispiece  by  Harrison  Fisher. 
At  a  Southern  California  resort  a  world-weary  woman,  young 
and  beautiful  but  disillusioned,  meets  a  girl  who  has  learned 
the  art  of  living — of  tasting  life  in  all  its  richness,  opulence  and 
joy.    The  story  hinges  upon  the  change  wrought  in  the  soul 
of  the  blas&  woman  by  this  glimpse  into  a  cheery  life. 

GROSSET  &  DUNLAP,  526  WEST  26th  ST.,  NEW  YORK 


A  FEW  OF 

GROSSET  &   DUNLAP'S 
Great  Books  at  Little  Prices 

QUINCY   ADAMS    SAWYER.      A  Picture  of  New 
England  Home  Life.    With  illustrations  by  C.  W. 
Reed,  and  Scenes  Reproduced  from  the  Play. 
One  of  the  best  New  England  stories  ever  written.    It  is 
full  of  homely  human  interest  *  *  *  there  is  a  wealth  of  New 
England  village  character,  scenes  and  incidents  *  *  *  forcibly, 
vividly  and  truthfully  drawn.    Few  books  have  enjoyed  a 
greater  sale  and  popularity.    Dramatized,  it  made  the  great- 
est rural  play  of  recent  times. 

THE  FURTHER  ADVENTURES  OF  QUINCY 
ADAMS  SAWYER.  By  Charles  Felton  Pidgin. 
Illustrated  by  Henry  Roth. 

All  who  love  honest  sentiment,  quaint  and  sunny  humor, 
and  homespun  philosophy  will  find  these  "  Further  Adven- 
tures" a  book  after  their  own  heart. 

HALF  A  CHANCE.  By  Frederic  S.  Isham.  Illus- 
trated by  Herman  Pfeifer. 

The  thrill  of  excitement  will  keep  the  reader  in  a  state  of 
Suspense,  and  he  will  become  personally  concerned  from  the 
start,  as  to  the  central  character,  a  very  real  man  who  suffers, 
dares — and  achieves ! 

VIRGINIA  OF  THE  AIR  LANES.  By  Herbert 
Quick.  Illustrated  by  William  R.  Leigh. 

The  author  has  seized  the  romantic  moment  for  the  airship 
novel,  and  created  the  pretty  story  of  "  a  lover  and  his  lass  " 
contending  with  an  elderly  relative  for  the  monopoly  of  the 
skies.  An  exciting  tale  of  adventure  in  midair. 

THE  GAME  AND  THE  CANDLE.    By  Eleanor  M. 

Ingram.    Illustrated  by  P.  D.  Johnson. 
The  hero  is  a  young  American,  who,  to  save  his  family  from 
poverty,  deliberately  commits  a  felony.    Then  follow  his  cap- 
ture and  imprisonment,  and  his  rescue  by  a  Russian  Grand 
Duke.    A  stirring  story,  rich  in  sentiment. 

GROSSET  &  DUNLAP,  526  WEST  26th  ST.,  NEW  YORK 


Stewart  Edward  White's 

Great  Novels  of  Western  Life. 

THE  BLAZED  TRAIL.  With  illustrations  by  Thomas  Fogarty. 
"  It  is  a  wholesome  story,  full  of  sinew  and  pluck  and  endur- 
ance, with  gleams  of  humor  and  touches  of  philosophy  and  play 
of  courage.  It  tells  of  the  young  man  who  blazed  his  way  to  for- 
tune through  the  heart  of  the  Michigan  pines." — The  Critic, 

THE  CLAIM  JUMPERS.    A  Romance. 

A  tale  of  a  Western  mining  camp  and  the  making  of  a  man. 
DeLancy  Bennington,  of  an  aristocratic  Boston  family,  finds  him- 
self manager  of  a  mine  in  a  gulch  of  the  Black  Hills.  The  ten- 
derfoot has  a  hard  time  of  it,  but  meets  the  situation,  shows  the 
stuff  he  is  made  of  and  "  wins  out  "  in  more  ways  than  one. 

THE  MAGIC  FOREST.    With  illustrations. 

"  No  better  book  could  be  put  in  a  young  boy's  hands.  The 
sympathetic  way  in  which  the  children  of  the  wild  and  their  life 
is  treated  could  only  belong  to  one  who  is  in  love  with  the  forest 
and  the  open  air.  Based  on  fact  and  throbbing  with  life." 

THE  SILENT  PLACES.    With  illustrations. 

"The  wonders  of  the  northern  forests  through  all  the  four  sea- 
sons, as  well  as  the  contrasts  between  youth  and  age,  feminine  de- 
votion and  masculine  power,  the  intelligence  of  the  Caucasian 
and  the  instinct  of  the  Indian,  all  are  finely  drawn,  while  the 
knowledge  of  nature  informs  every  page." — The  Dial. 

THE  WESTERNERS. 

"  Belongs  to  that  brilliant  galaxy  of  novels  which  open  with  such 
promise  for  pure  American  fiction.  This  story  of  the  Black  Hills 
will  claim  its  place  among  the  best  of  the  American  novels.  It 
portrays  the  life  of  the  new  West  as  no  other  book  has  yet  done. 

CONJUROR'S  HOUSE. 

Was  a  shipping  center  in  the  fur  trade  in  the  great  days  of  the 
Hudson's  Bay  Company.  How  Ned  Trent  entered  the  forbid- 
den territory,  took  la  longue  traverse,  and  subsequently  the  long 
journey  down  the  river  of  life  with  the  factor's  daughter  is 
ingeniously  told,  with  a  wealth  of  thrilling  and  romantic  situations. 

ARIZONA  NIGHTS.    With  illustrations  by  N.  C.  Wyeth. 

A  series  of  spirited  tales  emphasizing  some  phase  of  the  life  of 
the  ranch,  plains  and  desert,  and  all,  taken  together,  forming  a 
single  sharply-cut  picture  of  life  in  the  far  Southwest.  All  the 
tonic  of  the  West  is  in  this  masterpiece  of  Stewart  Edward  White. 

THE  MYSTERY.    With  illustrations  by  Will  Crawford. 

For  breathless  interest,  concentrated  excitement  and  extraordi- 
narily good  story-telling  on  all  counts,  no  more  completely  satis- 
fying romance  has  appeared  for  years.  It  is  mystery  and  adven- 
venture,  and  the  best  story  of  its  kind  since  Treasure  Island. 

GROSSET  &  DUNLAP,  Publishers,     -     -     NEW  YORK 


BRILLIANT  AND  SPIRITED  NOVELS 

AGNES  AND  EGERTON  CASTLE 

Handsomely  bound  in  cloth.     Price,  75  cents  per  volume,  postpaid. 

THE  PRIDE  OF  JENNICO.     Being  a  Memoir  of  Captain  Basil 
Jennico. 

"  What  separates  it  from  most  books  of  its  class  is  its  distinction 
of  manner,  its  unusual  grace  of  diction,  its  delicacy  of  touch,  and  the 
fervent  charm  of  its  love  passages.  It  is  a  very  attractive  piece  of 
romantic  fiction  relying  for  its  effect  upon  character  rather  than  inci- 
dent, and  upon  vivid  dramatic  presentation." — The  Dial.  "  A  stirring, 
brilliant  and  dashing  story."—  The  Oatlook. 

THE  SECRET  ORCHARD.   Illustrated  by  Charles  O.  Williams. 

The  "  Secret  Orchard  "  is  set  in  the  midst  of  the  ultra  modern  society. 
The  scene  is  in  Paris,  but  most  of  the  characters  are  English  speak- 
ing. The  story  was  dramatized  in  London,  and  in  it  the  Kendalls 
scored  a  great  theatrical  success. 

"  Artfully  contrived  and  full  of  romantic  charm  *  *  *  it  pos- 
sesses ingenuity  of  incident,  a  figurative  designation  of  the  unhal- 
lowed scenes  in  which  unlicensed  love  accomplishes  and  wrecks  faith 
and  happiness." — Athenaeum, 

YOUNG  APRIL.    With  illustrations  by  A.  B.  Wenzell. 

"  It  is  everything  that  a  good  romance  should  be,  and  it  carries 
about  it  an  air  of  distinction  both  rare  and  delightful." — Chicago 
Tribune.  "  With  regret  one  turns  to  the  last  page  of  this  delightful 
novel,  so  delicate  in  its  romance,  so  brilliant  in  its  episodes,  so  spark- 
ling in  its  art,  and  so  exquisite  in  its  diction. " —  Worcester  Spy. 

FLOWER  O'  THE  ORANGE.    With  frontispiece. 

We  have  learned  to  expect  from  these  fertile  authors  novels  grace- 
ful in  form,  brisk  in  movement,  and  romantic  in  conception.  This 
carries  the  reader  back  to  the  days  of  the  bewigged  and  beruffled 
gallants  of  the  seventeenth  century  and  tells  him  of  feats  of  arms  and 
adventures  in  love  as  thrilling  and  picturesque,  yet  delicate,  as  the 
utmost  seeker  of  romance  may  ask. 

MY  MERRY  ROCKHURST.    Illustrated  by  Arthur  E.  Becher. 

In  the  eight  stories  of  a  courtier  of  King  Charles  Second,  which  are 
here  gathered  together,  the  Castles  are  at  their  best,  reviving  all  the 
fragrant  charm  of  those  books,  like  The  Pride  of  Jennico,  in  which 
they  first  showed  an  instinct,  amounting  to  genius,  for  sunny  romances. 
The  book  is  absorbing  *  *  *  and  is  as  spontaneous  in  feeling  as  it  is 
artistic  in  execution." — New  York  Tribune. 

GROSSET  &  DUNLAP,  Publishers,         .         .         New  York 


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